


Under A Foreign Moon

by Slywyn



Category: Helluva Boss (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Blood and Injury, Drinking, Gen, Strong Language, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:01:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 39,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28186563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slywyn/pseuds/Slywyn
Summary: When a certain Hellhound has a particularly bad day at work, she ends up on the surface - bridges burned, no going back. With only herself to rely on, she's going to have to learn to pick up the pieces of a mess of her own making.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 46





	1. Under A Foreign Moon

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of the backstory of a version of Loon that I play on a site? So... read at your own risk and all that if you hate that kind of thing. Up to you, of course.

Rushing a portal was never a good idea.

In a dirty back alley in an unfamiliar city, the night air was split by a ragged red slice that had no business being where it was. Jagged and almost angry, unstable in the worst way, dripping energy that had been only barely called, the red slice split wide like the yawning maw of Hell itself and disgorged a single lupine shape into the night. A sound like the screams of the Damned themselves filled the alley as the portal flickered and died, leaving its passenger crumpled upon the ground, clutching small bundles to her sides, bleeding all over the pages of what looked like a rather expensive book.

"Motherfucker", came the rasped tones of a particular canine as red, faintly-glowing eyes opened to take in the sights that surrounded them. Dingy, red-brick walls rising several stories on either side, a terrified bum clutching a paper-wrapped bottle. Canine ears flickered at the familiar sound of alcohol licking the plastic walls of a cheap bottle, and of all things that is what pushed her to find her feet. Clothing torn, fur along her left side matted stark red against the normally crisp white, a clawed hand stained with blackened blood clutched the fresh wound and came away wet, drawing a second hissed curse from growling jaws.

Favoring her left side, the canine woman staggered to her feet and leaned against the wall long enough that she could catch her breath, drawing in hissed, painful air that lacked the familiar sulfurous stench that reminded her of home. She checked the items she held in her hands, a bundle of cash that looked pitifully small, a bag holding the murder weapon that kept it out of sight and out of mind, and a single spellbook that she'd managed to steal on her way out. Almost nothing. It'd have to do.

Glowing red eyes peered up through the brick walls that surrounded her, the light of the moon overhead reflecting in red and silver, white hair made grimy by struggle and toil falling over one eye. She took in a deep breath and hissed in pain against the stretch it pulled in her side, then hobbled toward the terrified hobo whose body odor would have burnt her nose if she hadn't done the job for him through years of abuse. Stunned hands gave up the bottle quickly as she raised it to her lips and took a long, practiced swig, then swallowed hard before she dashed the bottle against her side to splatter alcohol across the bloody wound in her fur, washing some of the red away and drawing a pained hiss of breath at the burn.

"Fucking... son of a bitch. Just couldn't get out of my fucking way."

Leaving the stunned hobo who had literally just seen a demon emerge from Hell to his business, she hobbled to the end of the alleyway, bottle sloshing where it was clutched in clawed fingers as she peered around the entrance of the alley. She didn't know what city she'd ended up in, but from taking part in planning missions and knowing where portals could end up spitting you out when botched, she was just glad she was in a city at all. 

Once she learned where she was, she could start planning. Every city had some Hellhole hideaway where her money would still be good and she could at least rest a few hours. The last half-day had felt like a nightmare brought on by too much drink, but she'd been far too sober for most of it to doubt whether or not it was real. The sting in her side and the pain of what she'd seen left no illusion as to their truth.

"Motherfucker", she breathed again as she forced herself to her feet, gritting sharpened teeth against the pain and ache as she simply picked a direction and started walking. Tonight would be a long, long night, and it had already seemed to stretch on for a lifetime.

Loona wiped tears from her eyes as she swigged cheap booze from a plastic bottle, lost on the surface with more bridges burned than she could count. Some of them in the most permanent way. 

_ How had it come to this?  _

She knew the answer, but she couldn't accept it.


	2. Room and Board

Finding a haven for demons in the city proved to be easier than she'd worried it would be. Once she'd figured out where she was, it had been a simple matter to consult records on her phone to find an address, and her nose had led her the rest of the way once she'd actually gotten close enough. The familiar sulfur scent of demons always clung tight to their little bolt-holes and hideaways and even with her burned-out nose she could find them through that alone when she was near.

The cheap booze in the bottle had barely lasted halfway down the street and what tiny amount of buzz it had brought her was already wearing off by the time she clattered clawed fists upon the metal door embedded in the wall down a small side alley. A small slot in the door screeched open, protesting metal upon metal as two mismatched yellow eyes stared at her standing in the darkness. "Who is it?", rasped an unfamiliar voice.

"Shut the fuck up and let me in", came her reply, and she leaned in close enough, having to stoop down due to her height, to let him see the smoldering red gaze that met his own.

There was a gravelly chuckle from the door as the slot screeched closed and the large metal door itself pulled open, revealing that looked nothing so much as a speakeasy parlor that might have been in fashion a hundred years ago. The imp who'd let her in hopped down off his stool to follow her as she made her way inside, slamming the door closed behind her to engage the myriad of locks - some magical to keep the mortals out, some mundane to keep other demons and unwanted guests away.

The Hellhound staggered her way to the counter and leaned upon it for support, a clawed hand reaching down to tease and test at the wound in her side. One of the few small mercies of being a form of demon - and therefore not truly 'alive' - was that they healed from non-fatal injuries surprisingly quickly, and though the wound was still tender it had at least mostly sealed itself and she wasn't bleeding. There was still plenty of red staining her fur, however.

"You look like ass", he intoned as he climbed up behind the counter.

"Fuck you", retorted the hound, and she slammed the bundle of bills she'd managed to steal on the wood. "I need this changed. And a room."

Small-clawed hands lifted the sad-looking bundle of blood-stained notes and flipped through them, making sure they were all the same. "This amount of Souls? You'd get a week. If that."

"Are you out of your fucking mind? That's at least a thousand!", she snarled, claws slapping into the wood as she leaned over to bring her gaze into line with his own again.

"Inflation's a bitch, hound." The imp flipped through the bills again and picked up a cigarette that'd been burning in an ashtray on the countertop to take a long drag as he meted out bills into several piles, counting out five days that she could stay in this refuge. Five short days to figure out her life on the surface. It wouldn't be enough.

"Fuck." Loona stood up tall again and leaned her head against the top of the counter, arm pillowing her forehead as she closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. "Fine, just." She shook her head and leaned back, pointing to the first pile. "Give me one night, change the rest. And get me a fucking drink. What do they use around here anyway?"

"Dollars", came the nonchalant reply as he swiped the four remaining piles of bills and hopped down off of his stool, heading for a safe in the back. "You won't be able to buy shit with this", he waved the depleted pile toward her. "If you were intending to stay you're up shit creek."

"Don't have a choice." 

He just shrugged in response and ticked open the safe (after making sure she wasn't watching, of course), then shoved her Souls inside and pulled out Dollars in a far smaller amount. She couldn't help the hiss that escaped her at the pitiful sight, but she knew without having to answer far more questions than she was willing to at the moment, she'd just have to accept whatever came her way.

He trundled back to the counter and fanned out bills. A scant five hundred was all she'd have. One night in a haven and then she'd be on her own. 

"That's it?"

"That's it."

A growled sigh met his assertion before she swiped the bills from the counter and gestured down the back hall with her other hand. "Just show me my fucking room."

The imp plucked a key down off of a small rack behind the counter and just chucked it at her, chuckling at her growl as she caught the key. "It's number two. Booze is in the fridge. I'm sure even a hound can count."

"Fuck you", she snarled, then headed off to room two on her own. It wasn't hard to find, there were barely five rooms in the whole place - not many demons stayed on the surface long enough to need somewhere to live for even a night or two. Basically only people in her position.

She unlocked the door and stepped through, having to stoop so she didn't hit her head on the transom, then slammed it shut behind herself. The tall hound settled herself heavily down upon the too-small bed that creaked under her weight. She could practically  **smell** the fleas scurrying under the sheets of the bed and all manner of other creature and critter probably hidden in every nook and cranny of the room.

Loona settled her head in her hands and fought back tears. She couldn't break down now, she had to keep her head on straight... She needed a drink. She stood up with a grunt and stalked to the aforementioned fridge, yanking open the door to the small mini-fridge that stood on a counter affixed ramshackle to one wall. Ignoring the bugs that skittered away when the door was open, she peered inside - drinks, some half-empty, and a stale, moldy crumb of bread someone had left behind who knows how long. "Fuck."

She stood, staring, at the sad state of the selection before her for several long moments before she robotically extended a hand and grabbed one bottle, popped the lid, and drew it to her lips, taking a long single swig that drained the whole bottle. "Fuck", she intoned again, staring down at the bottle before rage boiled up inside of her and she turned, flinging the bottle toward a wall. It didn't even shatter. Cheap plastic.

Loona snarled and snatched up another bottle, this one half empty. Glass. Good.

She raised it to her lips, draining what little was inside it, uncaring what she was drinking as long as it was something. Anything to numb the roiling storm that threatened to bubble up inside of her at any moment. " **Fuck!** ", she snarled and flung the bottle against the far wall where it shattered in a satisfying spray of shards.

With half a mind to tear the entire unit from the wall and fling it, just to see what damage it would do, she instead grabbed the largest still-full bottle it contained and slammed it shut hard enough to rattle the entire counter. Another creak announced to the room when she settled onto the bed again and the hound sank her head into her hands, taking draw after draw from the bottle. It tasted like someone had refilled an empty bottle with watered-down cheap shit after finding it empty, but she didn't care. That familiar numb feeling was creeping up behind her eyes, that's all she cared about. She needed to get good and drunk, black out, fall asleep.

To forget.


	3. Howl

The hardest part, she soon discovered, was finding somewhere - anywhere - that would accept her. She knew exactly why, of course... Glowing red eyes hidden behind a cheap pair of sunglasses she'd picked up out of a dumpster, imposing stature, the fact that she was a  **hound** and that was not at all regular... Nevermind that she didn't have things like ID, a driver's license, a work history, references, all these words that she'd never needed and never bothered with back home. Someone else had always taken care of these things - she'd needed to show up, answer phones, be  **present** more than anything... that'd always been enough.

Two days had gone by. She'd woken up, left the haven, absolutely certain she was full of fleas... but a quick bake of flame - she was immune, after all - had seen to that particular problem. Small mercies are what she was becoming increasingly reliant on. She'd splurged, just that first day, that first morning, thinking,  **believing** , that this would all be over soon. She'd find work, find a place to live, somewhere to sleep... She could afford a good, big breakfast just like she'd been used to be back home. A day full of slammed doors and laughter had set her straight on that account. 

She'd gotten angry, of course, screamed, shouted, threatened... Here, they just called the police on you, and more than once she'd had to disappear into back alleys and over fences to escape flashing lights and barked orders... Once she'd even heard a bullet slam into brickwork nearby, and she really wasn't keen on finding out exactly what might happen if she was hit. She knew that as a Hellhound she was tougher than most, but she didn't  **know** , couldn't risk it, so she'd laid low, moved to different parts of the city. 

The spellbook and the bag with that...  **thing** in it had been hidden nearby the haven. She at least knew that part of the city more than most other sections, it'd been the first area she'd properly explored, and the haven seemed to keep people away from it. That demonic sense of  _ wrongness  _ permeated the air as thickly as the sulfur inside of it and people shied away from it. It's part of why their havens even still existed up here on the surface, people tended to keep away from them, and so they weren't often discovered by those who shouldn't find them.

Two full days and a night after she'd arrived and if anything she was in worse shape than she'd been before. She still had some amount of money, sure, but she had no idea when she'd find more. She could steal, sure, but there was no guarantee of success and there were cameras everywhere; for someone who stuck out like a sore thumb at the best of times, that was a bad combination. A dwindling supply had her staking out dumpsters behind restaurants, figuring out which ones threw out edible food and which ones didn't... She'd been lucky enough to spot one place dumping freezer coolant over the contents of the dumpster... Probably to keep exactly people like her away from it and from rooting around in it.

A constant concern was her phone's battery, on top of everything else. All the time she'd lived in Hell, she'd had it as a constant companion at her side, never without for more than a few hours or a few scant minutes while she tracked down another charger. Now she was forced to keep it off most of the time. She'd snuck into a library once and found a charger, recovered a few precious percent before someone realized that she didn't belong and had chased her out, but she was running on fumes at this point.

She'd gotten a few phone calls, one from Moxxie, several from Millie, mostly angry, screaming, one crying. She'd ignored them other than to listen for a few moments, long enough to decide whether to hang up or not before she inevitably cut the connection. Between the two of them, they were probably responsible for more of her battery's drain than anything else. She hadn't spoken to them, she hadn't figured out how to explain it, how to tell them that it wasn't her fault, she didn't mean it, it'd been an  **accident** . But even to her own ears, they felt hollow and the words died soundlessly in her throat.

A drink would be nice. But it was a luxury she couldn't afford. She could feel pangs of... something, and she'd begun to wonder if this is what withdrawal felt like. This clawing, snarling at the back of her head, the thirst that refused to go away no matter how many water fountains she visited. It ached in a way she'd never felt before and she was quickly growing to resent, but it was a concern that she was forced to push out of her mind. She didn't know if she'd have the money for food, much less booze... She literally couldn't afford it.

At least she'd found somewhere to sleep. A park, in the city, a quiet corner where an old discarded sleeping bag had gotten tangled up in the lower branches of a particularly large bush. She didn't know whether it'd been forgotten here or if the previous owner had simply died and it had been left behind when the body had been removed... It certainly stank like a corpse had been within it at some point, but it was better than sleeping on the ground.

She'd washed it as much as she could in one of the park's lakes and then dragged it to a quiet corner where she could try to get some sleep. She sat upon it, now, rolled up to form some semblance of a seat as she looked up at the moon above. She'd been named after it, of course, she wasn't sure if it was  _ his  _ idea of a joke or not or if  _ he  _ really thought calling a hellhound "Loona" was a good idea.

Down in Hell, she'd not been able to see it, and she rarely went along with the rest of the I.M.P. crew on missions, so this was honestly one of the first time she'd been able to just sit, sit and look at it for more than a few fleeting moments at a time through a portal or at the other end of a video call. Phone, off, clutched in her hand, would have been the only other competitor for her attention but she just couldn't risk turning it on and burning what few precious percent she had left.

Silver reflected in red and white as she stared up, hands clutched around her knees drawn up against her chest. She could feel something welling up inside of her... a mixture of pain, anger, anguish, fear, shame, guilt... emotions that she simply didn't know how to cope with. She'd never felt more alone in her life, never been more lost,  _ he'd  _ always been there for her before. And she'd fucked it. Well and truly fucked it in the worst of ways.

Loona sank her muzzle into her knees and her tail curled around her legs, covering her feet, her ears flattening against her grime-mussed hair. "Fuck, why couldn't you move... Why couldn't you just get out of the way..." Heat welled behind her eyes as she fought back sobs. She didn't know how long she sat there, trying to control herself, but when she finally lifted her head, two wet splotches were visible within her normally-pristine white fur that was slowly and steadily taking on a grimy grey look. 

The sight of her fur, normally clean, cared for, one of the few things she went through the effort of actually keeping soft and fluffy - hellhound fur was notoriously difficult to take care of - grimy and stained proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back. The swirling torrent of battling emotions she'd been barely holding back burst out of her and she screamed to the night sky above, pain and fury in equal degree within her cry that soon turned to a howl of pure anguish. A few sympathetic cries went up in the distance as she released what had been building over the prior days, a long, aching sound that reverberated out across the lake and back to ears pinned flat against her head. Lack of breath, more than anything, brought her howl to an end as hands clutched into fists firm enough to threaten to crush her phone or pierce her own palm.

Some part of her wished to curl up under a tree and just die, but the angry part of her would never allow that. Her head sank into her hands again, muzzle buried between her thighs as she gasped for breath and fought back further tears.

"You son of a bitch", she panted to no one in particular. "Why couldn't you just get out of the way?" Loona lifted her head, taking her namesake into sight again as she wiped her hands across her eyes, trying to clear them. 

"All you had to do was move, dad...", she whispered to the moon above, a broken sound as her voice cracked.


	4. Small Mercies

Loona sat on the edge of a curb, her head hung, hands held out in front of herself. She still hadn't managed to find anywhere to work, anywhere to stay, and she was starting to lose hope that she would. She didn't know what she'd been thinking, honestly, that someone would hire someone like her. And as her living conditions worsened - she hadn't had a shower for what felt like a week - she was starting to feel like that was becoming less and less possible over time.

She was officially out of cash, she'd given up her last few bucks this morning just to get something decent to eat. She'd found a few boxes in the park and at least had a 'roof' but dumpster diving for food really wasn't her idea of a good time. There'd been a particularly nice one out back of a restaurant that she'd discovered, but she wasn't the only one, and more often than not it was already picked clean by the time she arrived. So here she sat, begging in all but name, hands outstretched for anything anyone might put into them. So far she hadn't had any luck.

At some point, she looked up and noticed someone standing in front of her - tennis shoes, what looked like the hem of a pair of jeans - and she lifted her head enough to peer up at her. It wasn't the first time someone had stopped to gawk - tall Hellhounds weren't exactly the most common thing to find sitting somewhere, but at least she hadn't been dragged off to the pound or something yet. As her eyes traveled up, she found herself looking at a relatively thin woman wearing a square pair of glasses, leather jacket - she guessed it was probably starting to get kind of cold, though her fur at least helped her there - someone who looked like they were far better off than she was at the moment. "What do you want?" Even her voice felt raspy to her, though she hadn't exactly been exercising it other than to talk to herself recently.

The woman adjusted a little purse on her shoulder as she peered down at the hound. "I haven't seen anyone like you around before. Kind of stand out."

Loona rolled her eyes with a soft huff of breath. "Tell me something I don't know. If you're going to insult me or some shit just move along, you're not even the first one today." She lowered her head again and went back to staring at the pavement between her legs, though the pair of shoes didn't move.

"I wasn't going to insult you." The woman slowly crouched down in front of her and held out a hand toward the hound. "I'm Victoria."

The hound lifted her head again, peering for several moments at the extended fingers, then decided that at the moment she wasn't really in the position to be turning away anything, even if it was some random stranger who'd stopped on the street. "I'm, uh, Loonie." She wasn't sure why, but if she was leaving everything behind... Maybe the name had to go too.

"Well,  **uh** , Loonie, what are you doing out here?" The woman gestured with her hand to the street around them.

"Take a wild guess", she snorted in reply, then adjusted herself so that she could rest her elbows on her knees and lay her head down upon her crossed arms, letting her get a better look at the person who was staring at her. Short-cropped black hair with purple tips, a single black star earring, square thin-rimmed glasses, leather jacket, jeans, tennis shoes. Practically screamed lesbian. Was she being hit on? Fucking weird.

The woman adjusted her glasses for a moment, then made a show of looking around. "I'm going to assume that something happened and now you're out on the street."

Her ears pinned flat against her head, and she loosed a soft sigh. "Good guess. Look, what do you want? I'm trying to beg for change here and you're kind of taking up valuable sidewalk real estate."

A smile crept across Victoria's lips for a moment before she gestured with her head off to the other side of the street. "I dunno, you looked like you could use a hand... Or at least a shower." She made a show of pinching her fingers across her nose.

Loona had to fight back a soft growl at that, but she knew this stranger was right. "... maybe. I... arrived a few days ago. Hoping to find a job somewhere. Get some cash. Didn't work out."

"I can tell." Victoria slowly stood and put her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "Need somewhere to crash for a few days?"

"I can manage on my own." Loona didn't feel particularly comfortable taking charity, especially like that, if it meant it was coming from some random on the street who'd just happened to be walking by.

"You're going to have a far harder time getting a job if you smell like wet dog, you know." 

Loona's eyes whipped up and she bit back a curse, but despite her raised hackles she knew that the woman was right. She slowly forced herself to relax, just breathing out a long sigh in reply. "I know."

"So come on then. You can have a shower, I have a couch you can crash on for a few days." The woman held out a hand, a finger extended. "Just until you can get your feet under you."

The hound weighed her options, flicking her gaze back down to the street in front of her. She had something she needed to get. "What's your address?", she asked as she glanced back up.

\-----

About an hour later she stood before the address she'd been provided on a scrap of paper. Without her phone, it was harder to find than she'd expected, but she'd stopped by a food vendor on the side of the street who'd given her directions - probably just to get the smelly hellhound away from his food. A certain package tucked up and under her arm, she stared up at the building in front of her. It looked like one of those older buildings that'd been built up when the city was trying to cram as many people as possible into as small a space as possible but hadn't quite graduated to building apartment buildings yet. Small one-family home crammed between dozens of others just like it.

Loona glanced from side to side, checking addresses to make sure she was at the right one, then breathed out a quiet sigh and stepped forward, lifting her hand to knock on the front door. She had several moments to debate with herself whether or not to leave... she still had no idea what this was about, why the woman was offering to help. Back home she couldn't think of anyone who'd do something like this - maybe Charlie, but Loona never believed that 'Happy Hotel' nonsense was anything other than a front for some kind of scheme anyway. She was about to turn and leave when her ears flicked and she heard the door in front of her opening up.

The woman she'd seen before opened it, though she was without the jacket this time, wearing a longer dark-colored sweater instead. She gave the hound a sort of half-smile, having to tilt her head up to actually meet her gaze. "You're taller than I expected. Though I didn't actually think I'd see you again, come on." She stepped back and away from the door, then motioned for 'Loonie' to come on in.

The hound hesitated for a few seconds more - she wasn't sure why she was so worried, she was pretty sure she could take her in a fight if it came down to it - before she stooped and stepped through the door. The building itself looked 'nice', fairly clean, not particularly decorated, just a few pictures here and there on the walls. She took a few moments to peer around, get her bearings a bit, while the woman closed the door behind her.

"There's a guest bathroom down here you can use, through that door over there." Victoria pointed with a hand down the main hallway - a staircase went up on the right, there was some kind of living room on the left, the hallway went straight on - then turned her attention to the tall hound. "You can throw your clothes in the wash, I can get a robe or something for you to wear in the meantime."

Loona turned her attention to the shorter woman, frowning slightly. "Why are you doing this?" She really couldn't figure it out, herself, nobody back home would have helped like this - Hell,  **she** wouldn't have ever done anything like this.

"Because years ago it was me sitting on that curb and someone did the same for me. Now go on." The woman gave her a shove and with a sigh, the hound padded off down the hall. 

Couldn't really argue with that.

Freshly showered and wrapped in a robe that really did feel like a joke - stark white and fluffy enough that she practically disappeared in it - with a towel around her waist for some semblance of modesty, the hound perched on a couch that felt like it was a couple of sizes too small for her and had creaked when she'd sat down on it. But at least she was clean, something she hadn't been able to say since she'd arrived here on the surface. The bathroom hadn't had the usual fur-care products she was used to - Hellhound fur was notoriously difficult to keep soft and smooth the way she liked it - but at least there had been soap and shampoo and she'd managed to get the grime and residual blood and stink of several days of sleeping more or less in the dirt out of her fur. There'd even been a brush she could borrow to try to get her hair into some sort of order. She practically felt like a new hound at this point.

Victoria wandered back into the living room that Loona'd seen before, where she was currently sitting, bearing a few sandwiches on a plate with a glass of water. "Here, you look like you haven't had much to eat."

Not one to really question food when it was offered, even like this, Loona was quick to snatch up one of the sandwiches. She had a feeling she knew what was coming next, and she was hoping she could just eat and grab her clothes and leave before things got too annoying.

"Where are you from, anyway? You kind of ... stand out."

Loona groaned - one of the questions she'd been dreading having to answer, and it was the first one on her figurative plate - then glanced over toward the woman. "I'm from south of here. Small town."

Disbelief was pretty clearly written across the woman's face, but she just picked up the mug she'd brought with her - smelled like tea - and took a sip while watching the canine eat. "... right. What was that stuff you brought in with you?"

"Personal." She wasn't about to be telling some stranger that she'd smuggled a spellbook to the surface - even if the woman wouldn't have any idea what it was, she was pretty sure she'd broken  **at least** a few laws or rules by bringing it up here with her. And of course, if anyone knew what  _ else  _ she'd brought. 

"Okay, okay, fair enough." Victoria held out a hand toward her, palm extended, fingers splayed, that classic 'don't get mad at me' gesture. "Sorry, I won't ask." 

Glad for the reprieve, Loona turned her attention to the sandwiches in front of her, deciding it might be her best chance to just stuff her face for a while. Several sandwiches later, she brushed crumbs away from her lips and glanced up at the woman. "So you're pretty, like, cool with... this." Meaning herself, of course, considering how odd she was compared to literally anyone else who could be found wandering around here. "What's up with that?"

Victoria glanced over at the hound. "Oh, well, you know. Seen some strange things. Most everyone else didn't seem to be bothering you at all - to be honest, I thought it was some kind of costume at first. The eyes gave it away, I think." She pointed to her own glasses. "They're too real."

"So you ... approached someone you thought was wearing a costume and you let them into your house?" Loona waved the last little bit of sandwich around with a brow raised.

She shrugged and sipped at her drink. "Yeah. You looked like you needed it." She adjusted herself in her seat and leaned over closer to the hound. "Do you have any family?"

Loona stuffed the rest of her sandwich in her mouth as her ears flattened against her head again. "No. Not anymore."

"Oh." The woman seemed able to read between the lines - at least a little - because she trailed off and didn't ask anything else for the moment. "Well, listen, you're welcome to stay a few nights... I have a friend or two I can talk to. Maybe get you somewhere to work."

Loona picked up her glass of water and took a sip, glancing at her reflection on the surface. "Yeah, sounds good." Something about this just wasn't sitting right with her, but honestly at the moment... She was just glad to have gotten something to eat and to have a chance to get clean.


	5. Progress And Reset

Victoria had, at the very least, come through with an offer of work. It wasn't something that Loona would have ever chosen to do on her own, especially because it was outwardly facing, but at the moment she just couldn't really be picky about it. She needed the money, and her offer of staying at the woman's place was conditional on the fact that she actually try to get back on her own two feet again. That didn't mean she had to like it, however.

The place she'd ended up finding work a few days ago was some small coffee place a couple of blocks from her new 'friend's' house, somewhere the owner knew her and would let her work under the table. No ID necessary, no background check, just show up for work, clock in and out, do what was asked of her, go back 'home' again. The worst part of it was dealing with customers. 

The hound glanced down at her nametag - Loonie - and just frowned a little bit at the sight of it. It'd been  _ his  _ nickname for her, something really only he'd called her, and now she was using it as her name... Maybe she just felt it was a little less on the nose for a hound up here to be called Loonie instead of Loona, maybe it was just part of trying to leave the past behind her... She'd fucked that up more than enough to want to leave it in the dust. Either way, it still made her ears twitch to hear someone other than him call her that, but she was slowly getting used to it.

The job wasn't  _ the worst  _ even though it wasn't great - they'd quickly put her on the register, which she'd thought was a terrible idea but at the same time it at least she wasn't actually making coffee. Here she could just stand at the register, she even got to play on her phone a little bit, which was helping her to settle back into a routine that felt vaguely familiar, almost like being back at I.M.P. in its own way. The others had tried to call her a few times... she'd even gotten a call from Stolas which she  _ immediately  _ canceled, she had absolutely no interest in trying to explain to him what'd happened. She wasn't sure he'd understand that it was an accident anyway - truthfully she wasn't even entirely sure herself what'd happened, what all had gone down... she'd been drunk and high and... even her own memory was fuzzy, which scared her more than most things did.

Still, she attempted to focus on what was before her now, knowing that she was going to have to try to make the best go of it up here on the surface that she could. She stuck out like a sore thumb but most people just seemed to accept it once she explained that she was from 'out of town' and left it at that... or they just didn't care enough to worry, which suited her just fine. A pair of sunglasses, while she was out walking around, kept most of the questions about her eyes from popping up too often, and when she was walking to and from work she could imagine that she felt almost normal, even if she didn't really know what 'normal' would be anymore.

When her shift was over, she stuck her phone into the pocket of her work pants that she'd been given - told that the pay would come out of her first check she'd get - and pulled the stupid hat she'd been forced to wear down off of her head. As she began to walk back toward Victoria's place, she pulled the hat up into her hands, peering at the logo on the front... She had to wear little pins just to keep the hat in place, it really didn't fit her head with her hair and ears in the way, and she'd had to cut a slit in the back of her pants to make room for her tail, but mostly she was making do.

Her phone buzzed again and she pulled it out of her pocket as she walked along, then realized that this time it wasn't a call or a text from someone trying to yell at her or anything... It was actually a comment on one of the posts she'd made on Instagram a while back... Something she hadn't done in a bit. Understandably, she'd been distracted, but it was just some rando asking where she'd been since she hadn't posted in a while. She considered uninstalling it and just ghosting entirely, but... Maybe she didn't have to throw away  _ every  _ part of her old life, did she?

Loonie lifted her phone up and took a picture of herself in her new uniform, ugly green shirt, tacky black slacks and all - she considered throwing up a peace sign or something but, to be honest, her heart wasn't in it. She quickly typed up a little message to add to it 'Up on the surface, had to leave home for reasons. Sucks up here.' and then posted it. She stopped for a moment, just looking down at it... She knew some of the others would see it, but she could deal with them when she was feeling up to it; for the moment seeing reactions starting to pop up on the post made her smile and that was good enough for her.

She was almost back to Victoria's place when she felt a hand on her shoulder, and she quickly turned around to see who it was. "Excuse the fuck out of you-", she started, then stopped for a second when she realized there were three actually rather large dudes staring her down... It almost made her laugh, and she lifted her hands in front of herself. "Guys, dudes, trust me, I don't have anything you want." She could barely believe it.

The one who'd grabbed her shoulder stepped forward, flicking a knife up into his hand. "We'll decide that. Empty your pockets."

The Hellhound really just wanted to laugh at them. The worst they could do was kill her - she'd just go back to Hell and have to climb her way back out again - and she was pretty sure she could do far worse to them. "Guys... listen, this is a really bad idea. Run along and find someone else." Loonie's red eyes flared slightly behind her glasses as she leaned in closer, annoyance starting to rise, masking something else entirely as they didn't seem to be getting the memo. If anything, the other two just closed in around the first. "Trust me, this will only end poorly for you."

She saw something like a flash of understanding in the first one's eyes - the one holding the knife - but as his buddies closed in around him, that flash dulled back down to resolve, and he lashed out with the knife. "Give us your money, bitch!" 

It managed to catch Loonie across her cheek, slicing through fur and flesh to leave an angry red streak that stung, and the hound closed her eyes, a soft snarl rising up through her chest. "You have  **so** fucked up."

Loonie almost felt sorry for them. Leather jackets and cloth shirts were no match for Hellhound claws, and the knives they brought were just not at all up to the task of taking her down or even intimidating her in the slightest. By the time she was through with them, the Hellhound was licking more of their blood off of her than her own, trying to clean some of the splatters off of her fur. "Fucking idiots. You don't even taste good."

The last one that hadn't run finally got to his feet and took off, leaving her standing alone on the sidewalk. She glanced down at herself and sighed... She'd have to wash her uniform. "Motherfuckers."

When she finally arrived back at Victoria's place, the woman opened the door for her with a smile, then almost immediately frowned as she caught sight of her. "What the - is that blood!?"

Loonie nodded, then just breathed out a long sigh. "Long story." She stepped inside, then told her 'friend' what'd happened, the walking home from work, three guys tried to jump her, she fought them off, blah blah blah. To her it wasn't even that exciting - the imps back home put up more of a fight than these guys - but to her new friend it seemed a lot more concerning than the hound thought it should.

"Are you okay? You're bleeding, fuck." Victoria practically ran off toward the kitchen, leaving Loonie standing in the hall to put a hand to the bridge of her nose. 

"I'm fine, really. It's just a couple of cuts, they'll be alright in a few hours-", she followed her off, hoping to cut her off before she got too excited and started doing shit she didn't need to when she wasn't even bleeding anymore. None of them were even deep, they'd just gotten her arms a couple of times, and the one on her face was practically already closed.

That got the woman to stop in her tracks and stare at Loonie, trying to take her in. "What do you mean a couple of hours? You need stitches!"

The hound just rolled her eyes and held out her arm, using her other hand to spread the fur - some blood still on her claws smeared, making it look worse than it was, but she just showed her the red mark on her arm that was already closing up. "Look, it'll be fine. I'm not even bleeding anymore. Trust me, don't worry about it."

Victoria just sort of stared for a few long moments, then looked up to Loonie herself. "What the... fuck? There are some things you're not telling me, aren't there?"

The hound rolled her eyes with a quiet sigh. "My ... uh, my family heal faster than most people. I'll be alright, don't worry about it. I just need to wash my clothes."

The woman looked at the hound sidelong before she just shook her head and put her hand on her forehead. "Right. Okay. Well." She began to put away the things she'd pulled out when she was worried, then glanced over toward Loonie again. "Go wash and get changed, then, there's somewhere I want to take you. There's a shelter nearby, you can have your own space."

Loonie's ears perked up before she frowned and peered down at the woman from where she stood near the door. "A shelter?" She couldn't help but get the mental image of being stuffed into a pound somewhere, and even though it was actually kind of funny, she didn't want to end up in some kind of cage. An odd feeling prickled up at the back of her neck but she tried to put it down - she had enough to worry about without worrying about paranoia too.

"Yeah." Victoria glanced over toward her. "You'll have your own room, you'll be with people like you - in your situation, I mean." She gestured toward the hound. "People trying to make a new start, whatever it is that you're trying to do."

Her ears flattened against her head slightly as she frowned, then shook her head. "Whatever. I guess I can't keep crashing in your guest room forever." 

Loonie headed back to 'her' room and changed, then walked off to the back of the house to throw her work clothes into the wash - she hoped the blood wouldn't stain, but they were dark enough clothes that even if it did she'd probably be fine. While she leaned against the washer her phone buzzed again and she fished it out of her pocket to have a look... Moxxie had posted to her picture she'd taken earlier. 'Please talk to us - Moxxie'. She frowned and set her jaw for a moment. There was a thud from elsewhere in the house, but she put it out of mind, for now, trying to decide whether to respond or not... Eventually, she just breathed out a little sigh and typed in a four-letter response. 'Soon'. Hopefully, that'd tide them over - she still just... didn't feel ready to try to explain herself.

When she walked out of the room something  **felt** different, but in a way that she couldn't really put a finger on, but it made the fur on the back of her neck stand up. "Victoria?" She called out toward the house, but there wasn't a response. Frowning even more, she began to walk through the home to try to figure out where the woman had gone. "Hey? You still here?"

It wasn't until she rounded the corner into the main room where the two of them had first spoken that she realized just what was going on and why things had felt weird. Victoria stood in front of three large bulky guys - not the ones from before, though they had that same look to them - though these were all in matching uniforms. And there were small silver crosses emblazoned in the shoulders of each of their jackets. Loonie's shoulders fell and she breathed a soft 'fuck' in response to the sight.

"This will be a lot easier if you cooperate. We weren't sure before, but-", Victoria began.

Loonie cut her off immediately. "Oh just shut the fuck up already will you? Fucking hunters."

Then one of the larger guys raised a small pistol which spat with a quiet air-powered 'ptoo' and a dart slammed into her shoulder. Everything went dark after that. Even the floor felt soft when she slammed into it, and she knew no more.


	6. Friendly Questioning

Loona slowly came to, her eyes staring blearily into what looked like a small sun. She blinked several times... her head felt full of molasses, she felt like she could feel her brain sloshing from side to side every time she shifted her head, felt like it was going to come pouring out of her ears at any moment. She hadn't been this high in months, she'd need to tell Blitzo about this, whatever it was, he'd probably love it.

Her head spun as she tried to focus her gaze on something, any part of the room she was in, but her eyes just wouldn't bring together a solid picture. She lifted her hands to try to rub at her eyes - then realized that she couldn't actually move her wrists. She felt cool, solid metal wrapped around her arms, tight enough that it was almost cutting through her fur, and her eyes rolled in their sockets as her mind attempted to process what the fuck was going on around her.

The hound's ears flickered as she heard a key turn in a lock behind her and a door open. She heard at least two sets of footsteps, but only one person appeared in her vision. It was  _ so hard  _ to get her eyes to focus on anything, but she was pretty sure she recognized the person in front of her. "Victoria? What happened, where the fuck am I?" Her tongue felt thick and she wasn't even sure the woman in front of her would be able to understand what she was saying - even to her own ears she sounded like she was slurring. How much did she drink last night? What  **happened** ?

The woman in front of her waved away someone Loona couldn't see before turning her attention to the restrained and sedated hound in front of her. "What are you doing here?"

What a strange question to open up with. "I live with you or something don't I? Fuck." She didn't understand why it was so hard to focus on anything. She'd never been this fucked up in her life, she was pretty sure, and she'd bought some really good shit from that dealer one time...

Victoria reached up and adjusted her glasses, clasping her hands in front of herself afterward. "What are you doing on the surface?"

"Getting away from shit." That answer had just... popped out of her, unbidden. She was pretty sure she'd never told Victoria where she was from... What the fuck was going on here? Something like coherent thought was starting to bubble up in the back of her head, but whatever was weighing her down kept shoving it back under the soup that filled her head at the moment.

"Getting away from what, exactly?" The woman lifted her hand and gestured to something behind Loona, and the hound felt a prick in the back of her neck, through her fur.

As soon as she did, that feeling in her mind that was weighing her down sagged back down like a ton of bricks, and her head fell forward with a quiet groan. "From... shit." Even that answer felt like it was dragged up through several tons of muck, and she swore she'd bitten her own tongue just trying to talk.

It took a moment for her interrogator to speak again, she was slowly tapping at the phone in front of her, but Loona's vision swam so bad she could hardly tell what  **kind** of phone it was, much less what she was actually doing with it. She glanced down and noticed red dribbling down onto the fur of her chest and she blew a breath, some of the fur ruffling. "Bleedin'...", she muttered to nobody in particular.

"Unfortunate, but common." Victoria didn't even sound like she was talking to the hound anymore, more like she was just talking  **at** her instead, but eventually the woman looked up again. " **What** are you getting away from? Why are you here?" There was a little more force in her words this time, more directness in her tone.

It didn't really help. The hound couldn't control her vision, or her tongue... She was pretty sure she was drooling all over herself, just adding to the mess in her fur since her tongue was still bleeding. She tried to draw it back up into her mouth but it felt like it weighed as much as a truck, she could barely move her jaw. "Killed... sum'in." How she was managing to answer anything, much less talk in this state, was beyond her, but it was like the answers were being drawn up out of her by whatever it was that was filling her head.

"Oh, she's useless like this. Give her the shot." Victoria waved her hand dismissively to someone behind the hound, and Loona felt another shot in her neck. This one burned.

It was like a blanket was being pulled out of her mouth and a sack of bricks being tugged up and out of her head. Whatever had been weighing her down seemingly pulled out all at once, the soup between her ears clearing as clarity returned. It all came rushing back to her all at once. "Oh fuck." What she'd done, her speech clearing, no longer so heavily slurred. "Oh fuck." Who she'd hurt. "Oh  **fuck** ." What she'd used, and where it was. Her head shot up and with a new clarity, her eyes finally focused on Victoria. Her teeth clenched and she rattled against the metal bands wrapped around her wrists. "YOU FUCKING BITCH", she roared, her chair creaking in protest as she struggled against it.

A sharp pain smacked her in the back of her head hard enough that she whipped forward, slamming her nose into the metal table with a clang that resounded through her head. Her nose came away wet, bleeding, and the back of her head stung and then went cold - she was pretty sure she was bleeding back there too. "Shut up", came a male voice from behind her, and something that sounded like a bat slapped into a palm.

"We just need you to answer a few questions, and then we'll send you home." Victoria's voice was calm and measured, ignoring the red dripping from the hound's teeth and the end of her nose. A quiet, wet noise began to sound rhythmically within the room as Loona's nose dripped onto the table.

"Fuck you", the hound snarled, and she received another smack on her head - that one sounded wet, and her vision swam. "Motherfuckers!"

"I told you, this can be easy, all you have to do is cooperate." She motioned to the man standing behind Loona, and a large brick wall of a human walked into view. The black bat he was holding dripped with red. "If you don't, he gets you and we send you back home. Eventually." She waved the man away and Loona heard his shoes grind into the dust on the floor as he took up position again. "Why are you up here?"

Loona spat red onto the table. "Fuck you, I already told you." The man must have raised his bat again because Victoria held up her hand. Loona couldn't turn her head - they had her in some kind of binding that forced her to keep her head forward, though it apparently didn't keep her from rocking forward when hit. "I left."

Victoria tapped at her phone for a few more moments, then apparently waited for an answer for several more. Eventually, she looked up at the hound again. "What do you mean you 'left'? Demons don't just leave."

"Fuck you mean we don't. I fucking did." She had to spit again, a growing pool of red forming on the table between her nose and her bleeding tongue. It must have been a pretty good bite if it hadn't closed up already. Her head swam but boiling rage at what was happening kept her lucid. "I left. Fuck that place. Fuck Hell. Fuck it all. Place fucking sucks anyway. Have you been there? You will. We get you demon hunter fucks down there all the fucking time. Turns out when the big guy says thou shalt not kill, he didn't fucking stutt-" Another wet  **crack** , this one louder, and her face slammed into the table again. She was pretty sure she felt something break.

"You'll answer the questions and nothing else. I don't need a demon  proselytizing at me." Victoria looked away from the smeared red across the table, then turned her gaze back toward the hound.

"I'm a fucking hellhound", she snarled, pulling at her bindings again. "End me, send me back, I'm not telling you a damn thing." She tried to turn her head but her neck refused to move, and she spat red as far to the left as she could. "Had worse when I picked up an imp to fuck, weak-ass shit." Her nose ran like a faucet and her vision swam, sometimes she was seeing double, but all they were realistically doing was pissing her off. She'd recover faster than they could keep hitting her - if they wanted her dead, they'd have sent her back already. Something was different. "What the fuck do you want? I told you why I'm here. I  **left** ."

"You did. You said you killed someone too." Victoria looked up from her phone. "Who?"

Loona snarled, her ears flattening against her head as her claws dug at the chair. "A ... nobody. Nobody you care about. Another one of us."

A new voice came on over speakers. "Levels spiked."

"Who the fuck is that?" The hound tried to look, but she still couldn't move her neck.

Victoria smiled just a little bit, enough to tug up at the edge of her lips. "Nobody you care about. So you left Hell because you killed someone, and by your own admission, 'nobody we care about'... So why did you leave? Demons kill each other all the time."

The voice came on over the speakers again. "Levels spiking. Emotional response."

Whatever that meant made the human's brow raise over her glasses, and that just drew Loona's ire all the more. She snarled, trying to think of what to say, but nothing came to mind, no response that wouldn't tell them something she didn't want to. She slowly slumped in her chair and her head hung, dripping red into her lap. "Fuck you." Her voice was quieter than she would have liked, but all the fight drained out of her all at once. "Just send me back. Get me out of here."

She couldn't see what was happening, her head was down, but she heard what sounded like surprised shifting from both of the people in the room. Victoria didn't speak for some time, but she heard the woman's phone rattling quietly against the table for quite a while. Some sort of conversation going on with someone on the other side, probably. Eventually, she spoke again. "So let me get this straight", she began, "You killed someone in Hell, and then you ran away from Hell to ... come up here? With nothing? I found you on the street, begging for change. Out in the open, not trying to hide... And then you spend weeks working at a coffee shop for barely more than nothing." As Loona glanced up, Victoria shook her head. "As far as I can tell, it doesn't make any sense."

The man behind her finally spoke. "It's almost cute. It's like it thinks it's human."

Loona glanced off to her left. "Oh go fuck yourself." She spat another puddle of red onto the table, then turned her red gaze toward the woman across from her once more. "Because it doesn't make any sense. Not if I wanted anything, or if I was after anything. But trust me, I'm not. I just..." She paused, mulling it over, "I thought... I could start over." She let her head hang with a groan. Her whole head felt sore, the more she calmed the worse it got as adrenaline or whatever it was that was keeping her going subsided.

She heard Victoria's chair creak and she seemed to speak to the ceiling. "Anything?"

"Nothing." The voice seemed to hesitate, and there were whispers like they were conferring with someone else. "... It looks like the truth to us."

"What part of it?"

"All of it, as far as we can tell."

That brought silence to the room for longer than Loona would have expected. She eventually raised her head to try to look, but she felt like at some point she'd pulled something in her neck and she just let it hang again. As far as she'd seen, Victoria was just staring at the ceiling, thinking. Rather than let the silence run on any longer, Loona decided to break it herself. "Gonna send me back now, assholes? Got what you want?"

Victoria took some time to answer her, but eventually, she lowered her head and looked at the hound across from her. "No."

The man behind her started like he'd been slapped. " **What** ."

Victoria waved dismissively at him. "As far as I know, this is the only demon-", she paused for a moment and laughed derisively, "Forgive me,  _ hellhound _ , who has ever come to the surface for... nothing. Nothing other than to live." As Loona looked up, Victoria waggled her phone at the man behind her. "Higher-ups want to keep her around for study."

Loona snorted, blowing more red across the table, but there was less this time; her nose was healing. "Got nothing to learn from me."

"Oh on the contrary. Someone like you who doesn't plan on going back to Hell?" Victoria leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other as she rested her arm on her knee. "Never had a pet demon before, I'm sure we could learn all sorts of things."

The hellhound snarled quietly under her breath. "I'm not your  **pet** , you fucks."

"I'd put you on a leash if I thought it'd help. Call yourself what you want, but you don't want to go back down, and we want you to stay up here - for now. As far as I'm concerned, we'll call you whatever we want." Victoria pushed herself up and out of her chair, then gestured at the man behind the hound to go. "Get out of here, I'm taking the shackles off."

"Your funeral", he intoned, then Loona heard a door open and close.

Victoria stepped close enough that she could lean down and look Loona in the eyes, almost nose to nose. "I'm taking the shackles off. You harm me in any way and they'll send you back. I believe you that you don't want to go back down there, and I always told you that if you cooperated then this all would have gone so much more smoothly." The woman reached across and tapped keypads on the side of each chair arm, continuing to talk. "Unlike some of my associates, I think there's still a lot more we could learn from your kind; if we could ever find one who'd talk to us. You present a unique opportunity."

Loona resisted the urge to reach up and tear her throat out the moment her hand was freed, but she closed her eyes and forced the wrath bubbling just under the surface back down. They were right, she didn't want to go back home. There wasn't anything left for her there.

For her part, Victoria almost seemed shocked. "I can't believe it. Not so much as a swipe?"

As her other arm came free, Loona lifted her hand to her nose and wiped away slowly-drying blood from the end of her snout. "Don't push your fucking luck."

The human woman just grinned smugly. "There may be some hope for your kind after all."


	7. Out With It

Loona had been left to her own devices in the room, allowing her a chance to finally look around. Whatever had been locking her in place had been removed - she assumed it was some kind of binding, she hated those - so she could finally turn her head to get a good idea of her surroundings. There wasn't much to see, truthfully, she was in what looked like some kind of interrogation room, white walls, a one-way window on one side, a single bright light overhead, a couple of chairs, and a metal table. Looked like something out of a shitty action movie.

Aside from her own drying blood on the table and one hell of a headache they'd left her completely by herself for the moment. She assumed they were probably off trying to figure out exactly what to do with her. To be honest, even she didn't know what she wanted to do at the moment. She'd come here to try to get away from everything, to escape, and all she'd managed to do was get herself wrapped up in even more problems. She wasn't even sure she'd still have the job - the only progress it felt like she'd made since she arrived - because apparently that had been arranged by the hunters too. Even when she left to try to do things on her own, she still couldn't get by without help, it seemed like.

The hound tried to brush aside some of the mess on the table so she could scoot forward in her chair, put her elbows on the metal, and cradle her head in her hands. If she closed her eyes for a minute and just relaxed, she felt like she could get this headache under control just a little bit. Maybe then she could try to think, try to come up with some kind of plan... but to be honest, she had no idea what to do. She hadn't had a plan when she left - she was too afraid, guilty, angry for that - and in all her time up here she hadn't managed to come up with one yet. Ironically, the hunters had given her the inklings of one.

What if she really did come up here to try to start over? She'd fucked over everything left for her down there. Blitzo was dead, she couldn't believe she'd forgotten that. Out of everything the hunters had done, the trickery, the drugs, the abuse, making her forget that and giving her that hope that she could just go home and talk to him - even for a moment - was what she hated them for the most. 

Hell had nothing left for her, even Millie and Moxxie probably only wanted to talk to her so they could bitch at her over what'd happened. She had no idea at all what Stolas wanted to talk about, but the longer that conversation got put off the better she was, she was pretty sure. Maybe she really could try again up here. She'd made  **some** small amount of progress and she felt like she hadn't even been up here that long. Though, to be honest, she didn't really know what she'd change, what she'd try to do differently...

She didn't have all that long to wonder before her thoughts were interrupted, the door behind her creaking open. She turned her head to peer out at the disturbance from underneath her own arms and spotted several pairs of legs, people muttering amongst themselves while staring at her. She was pretty sure that she was quickly gaining an understanding of how zoo animals felt at this very moment.

"Not even trying to escape." "Hasn't killed anyone." "Why's it here?" "Why isn't it dead?", among other things. The voices quickly moved off, though one pair of legs remained behind. They shifted around - looked like a guy from the expensive-looking loafers - then pulled Victoria's chair out and sat down.

Whoever it was didn't say anything for quite some time, and with the mood that she was in, Loonie herself didn't much feel like talking. She let her head fall again, and for a while, she was almost able to forget that there was someone else in the room aside from the occasional shift from the seat across from her or quiet cough or rustle of clothes. Just enough of a distraction to be unobtrusive, but not leave her alone enough with her thoughts to really sit and think about what she was going to do next.

It was like they were testing her to see who would break first, and they probably weren't disappointed when the hound finally lifted her head and spoke. "What do you want?" He looked like any other of hundreds of human males she'd seen, older, greying hair, goatee. There was something about his eyes though, something she recognized - he looked past his prime but this guy had eyes like some of the demon princes she remembered from back home did. Like a predator, a real one, someone who'd gut you without a second thought.

"We're prepared to offer you a deal", he finally responded, and his voice wasn't as deep as the one he looked like he should have. "You answer some questions, truthfully, allow us to cast a spell on you - tracking, nothing intrusive, just so we know where you are if you ever have a change of heart - and we let you go. We'll be keeping an eye on you of course but we've decided to allow this... experiment to go forward." He spoke very matter-of-factly toward her, there was no threat, no coercion, just statements of fact and nothing else.

"What do you mean experiment?" Loona knew she must look a complete and total mess - her nose was probably streaked with red, there was dried blood and matted fur all down her front, the back of her head probably didn't look much better - she could feel a mat of blood and hair that she hadn't had a chance to clean.

He looked down at the table then, seeming like he was weighing how to explain. "We have never met a demon who did not seem to be up here for  **a reason** . Gathering souls, corruption, sowing chaos, for fun. All before you have had a reason to be here, and generally one that was bad for us. You, however", he lifted a hand and pointed a finger toward her, "Seem to be here for no other reason than to escape. You are hellborn, correct?"

Loona rolled her eyes with a sigh. "Yeah, far as I know. Don't exactly remember being a pup."

"I see. So you were not 'damned' as others might be..." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small manilla folder, making Loonie's ears perk up out of curiosity despite herself. "Now, forgive me, I may be getting ahead of myself", he intoned as he licked the tip of his fingers and began to flip through pages in the folder, "-but if our records are correct, and for your particular group they are extremely sparse, but you used to work for an 'I.M.P.', yes? I would assume that if you are on the surface, your employment was somehow terminated."

She felt her jaw fall open slightly and she had to gather herself enough to close it back up again. "How the fuck do you know that?"

He glanced up at her and for once she saw something approaching a smile on his features, though it soon enough returned to the same relatively impassive expression. "We make it a habit of keeping tabs on organizations that venture from Hell to Earth. Could you answer the question?"

Loona growled quietly in her throat and settled herself back in her chair. "Yeah. And you could say I was 'terminated'." She glanced off to the side, trying to figure any of this out... so much of all of this felt way above her pay grade and she'd somehow managed to get herself right in the middle of it. "How the fuck-"

She was cut off as he raised his hand, palm toward her. "That's all I needed to know, thank you. Low threat, some reason to be up here that seems benign on the face of it, few contacts..." He pulled a pen from his jacket and scribbled something in the file, then slapped it closed. "You may stand."

Just to spite him, she settled back in her seat and frowned, arms crossed over her chest, and stared right up at him. "I don't want to."

  
He took the chance to stand, however, and made his way to the door. "That may well be true, but we cannot continue if you do not." He opened the door and held out a hand toward the hallway outside of it. "Now, if you would please..."

The hound let out a quiet, grumbling sigh and pushed herself to her feet. "Fuck, fine." She stood up and moved to the door - at least she was still taller than him, so she felt like she'd won  **some** part of this, even though she didn't really know what this particular contest was about. The hallway outside the door almost looked like it belonged in an old library or someone's mansion - wood on the walls, thick carpet, small chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. "Where the fuck are we?"

"Just outside of the city. Local headquarters." The man stepped through the door and waited for the hound to follow, then headed off down the hallway, his steps completely silent on the carpet below. He replaced the file in the pocket of his jacket, then clasped his hands together behind himself as he walked, a steady, measured pace. "You are to meet with the council. Your hands will be bound - a simple precaution, that's all - and you'll answer our questions.  **Truthfully** , though I know that is not a strength of your kind."

"And if I don't?" She wasn't sure she wanted to tell them just what she'd brought up here with her.

  
"If we are not satisfied with your answers, you will receive a quick and painless return trip home", he said in that same matter-of-fact way.

Loona rolled her eyes with a sigh. "Should have assumed as much."

After a dizzying number of hallways and intersections and what felt like at least three different sections of the building - some with stone floors, some with wood, some with more carpet, and more men and women walking around who stayed well out of their way and had some varying degree of disgust on their face when they saw the hound - they finally arrived in front of a particularly large set of wooden doors flanked by men who looked like the ones she'd seen at Victoria's house. The only differences were that these were carrying guns - real ones, not the air-powered thing she'd been shot with before. She imagined if she  **did** try anything, which she wasn't planning to, she'd be mowed down before she'd managed to finish saying 'fuck you'.

One of them pulled the door open and the man she'd been following stepped inside. Loona followed him, but almost as soon as she did, someone  _ else  _ inside took her by the shoulder and shoved her into a chair that was already pulled out and away from a table. A bright light shone almost directly down into her face, forcing her to lift a hand to try to block some of it out just so she wasn't blinded, but even that was pulled away from her as her arms were zip-tied to the chair. Metal ones, none of those plastic things she could tear through if she put her mind to it. 

"Fuck, any harder, and I'd ask when the whip was coming out", she spat off to one side, which actually earned a chuckle from someone sitting on the opposite side of the room that she couldn't see thanks to the light. "Oh, good, at least one of you has something approaching a sense of humor." She tried to look and see at least how many people she was talking to, but the light made it impossible, it hurt to even turn her head forward much less actually look at anyone.

A female voice, one that sounded far older than most of the others she'd spoken to before, spoke up first. "What did you bring with you to the surface?"

"Fuck, this is really the first one?" She twisted her head from side to side to try to find an angle that didn't hurt, but eventually just settled for hanging her head so that some of her hair could shield her from some of the light and closing her eyes. If they didn't want her to see who they were, this was definitely working. "Damnit, fine. A spellbook, I don't know what it is, I was going to try to sell it to someone."

"Is that all?" A different voice, male she thought but it was hard to tell.

The hound growled softly. She didn't want to talk about this - it was something they might shoot her for on the spot, but they were going to do it anyway if she didn't tell them. "Fuck! No. I brought... It couldn't stay down there, I don't know what I was going to do with it, okay?"

" _ What _ did you bring." Same voice.

"It's a fucking...", she sighed. "An Exterminator pistol." When a confused murmur sounded from the other side of the room, she tried to hurriedly explain - she didn't want them sending her back just because they didn't understand what it was. "Fucking... They come to Hell once a year, slaughter us to make space, mostly target Sinners, come from... I don't think I need to explain to you from where."

"I think you do." A different female voice, sounded sort of familiar... was that Victoria? It was hard to tell, again.

"Are you shitting me? They come from Heaven, fine. Cut through us like so much better, don't even bother to take all of their weapons with them. Bl- I- We got ahold of one, like... a couple of months ago." She wanted to look up, but the light in her face reminded her yet again why that was a bad idea. "Only thing that kills Demons and Sinners and every-fucking-thing else deader than dead. You can see why an assassination outfit having one might be a good idea."

"But something went wrong and now you're up here?"

"No, it wasn't like that, I-"

"That's a good question." That sounded like the man she'd been talking to before. "What happened that drove you to the surface?"

Loonie's head hung as she breathed out a sigh. "I really have to answer this one?"

"Yes."

"Fuck." She had to try to figure out how to explain it in a way that would make sense to them, but she had a feeling they wouldn't get it even if she did figure anything out. "I took it. We had a contract, something that... That Blitzo didn't want to take. Above our pay grade."

"Explain."

"Someone wanted us to punch up, okay? Open up a spot in the hierarchy, make a little wiggle room, shake things up, whatever. It was a big deal. They found out we had it-"

"The pistol."

"Will you shut the fuck up and let me talk?" That seemed to get some degree of silence from the rest of the room. If she was going to actually tell them this story, she needed them to shut the hell up and actually let her tell it. "Fucking finally. They found out that we had it and wanted us to use it. He didn't want to, I said I could do it, wanted to show that I was good for something other than sitting at home and fucking... just, answering phones, okay? That I could do things too."

The hound bit her lip as she let her head hang. She couldn't believe how fucking stupid she'd been. "I got drunk, I was nervous, I got high. I was fucked up. I knew the safe combination, I grabbed it. He came in and... we fought. I was stupid. I just... I just wanted to prove..." She wished her hands were free, and she tugged her wrists against the bindings. She needed to cover her eyes so they couldn't see her cry.

"We need you to continue." The voice was surprisingly gentle, but at the moment she really didn't want to hear it.

"Fuck you, okay?", she hated that her voice cracked, she hated that she could hear how thick she sounded. She hated that she was in this situation, that they were getting to hear this and see her like this before anyone else. It didn't feel fair that she was having to tell this to complete strangers. "You wanna fucking know so bad? It went off. He fucking died. There, you happy now? We fucking-", she kicked at the floor, wanted to kick herself, wanted to tear out of this chair and set fire to the room. "We fought and it went off." She couldn't fight back the quiet sob that tore itself from her throat. "I shot... I shot my dad. And he died. He didn't... he could have moved. He just... he needed to get out of the way. If he hadn't been right there..." 

She found herself unable to talk anymore, she just wanted to curl up and die right there on the spot. She felt like a pup again, like she wanted to go hide under the blankets and cry and wait until he found her and told her that it'd be okay. But it didn't feel like it'd be okay ever again. She knew she was crying, curled up in the chair she was strapped to, but at the moment she just couldn't bring herself to care. She couldn't make it stop, and some part of her didn't want it to stop. She'd felt ashamed that she'd never managed to properly grieve for him, and if she was forced to so right here right now then fuck everyone else, that's what she was going to do.

She could hear murmuring voices talking to each other - some sounded surprised, some angry, some decrying this 'farce', others even sounded sympathetic. One cut through the others. "I don't see the big deal, it was just an imp."

Her sorrow immediately switched gears and she felt angry enough that she could set the entire building aflame, and she tugged at her chair so hard that the bindings cut into her wrists. "FUCK YOU! Fuck! You!" The hound struggled against her chair so hard that the entire thing tipped and fell over, and she snarled as she snapped at the carpet and the table leg and anything in reach. Anything she could do to answer the insult. There was a familiar 'ptoo' sound and that blanket settled over her head again. She was tugged up by her chair to sit upright, the hound's hair fallen over her head as she sat there, limp, even her breathing felt heavy. All she could do was listen to the clamor and cacophony of voices as they argued amongst themselves.

"Amazing emotional response-" "-clearly more study of hellborn required-" "-bleeding everywhere-" "-just a demon-" "-such fury-" "-thinks it's human-" "-kill it-" "-clearly cannot control-" "-dangerous-" "-opportunity."

Whatever they'd given her seemed to be a much stronger dose considering that she could do little more than sit here and drool all over herself, but it seemed to wear off more quickly. Slowly she could feel the fog lifting - she hadn't been this fucked up this many ways in such a short amount of time since the last time she'd gone to one of those big parties. As she recovered, the arguing voices died down, though she had no idea what they'd decided on.

It took her quite some time to realize that one of them was actually asking her a question. "What do you want?" It took one of the people behind her slapping her on the cheek to finally 'wake' her to the point that she could pay attention - the sedative was wearing off but she still felt half-awake.

"What?"

"What do you want? Up here, on the surface. What do you actually want?"

For some reason, this question seemed important - more important than the others, at least to  **her** . Or maybe just where she was concerned. She knew why but her foggy brain just wasn't bringing up the right answers. "I just... I want to try ... again. Different. Be... different. Better." She tried to look up, but she'd forgotten about the light and her head hung again. So fucking bright. "Hell... it fucking sucks. Everyone down there sucks. We're all so... shit. So terrible. Assholes." She groaned, her head falling back to rest on the back of the chair. The back of her head still hurt but her neck felt like it was going to snap if the sack of bricks that was her head hung down like that anymore. "Wanted to... hoped to find something... better." Her head rolled off the chair and hung down again as she looked at her lap. Bloodstained, wet with drool, with tears. "I think he wanted better from me", she finally admitted, though she hated how thick her tongue sounded when she said it.

The man who'd met her in the room before finally spoke up. "I think we've heard enough." His voice sounded surprisingly gentle. Maybe he understood.


	8. Home At Last

By the time they'd undone her bindings and shut the light off it took a minute or two for her eyes to adjust, and by then it seemed like most of the people in the council she'd been speaking to were long gone. Only one remained, the same guy she'd seen before, standing nearby and speaking to one of the guards. She still felt groggy, and she raised a hand to her temple to massage softly just underneath the fur. "You assholes have got to stop drugging me."

There wasn't an immediate reply, but the man took a chair from the other side of the actually rather large table - she hadn't been able to get a good look at it before, she was sat on one side and on the other side there were at least twenty chairs all crammed together - and placed it down in front of her, facing her, then settled himself into it. "There was no other way to speak, unfortunately. One of your kind is too dangerous to leave to their own devices."

Loonie rolled her eyes and let her head hang, supported on one hand while the other rested on her thigh. "Maybe I wouldn't be so dangerous if I didn't feel hungover from the shit you keep stabbing me with."

"That is quite possibly true, but not a risk many of them were willing to take." He leaned himself back in his chair and pulled out a small wooden pipe. "Do you mind?"

She glanced up, then shook her head. "No."

He nodded, then lit himself up and took a few puffs. "There are just a few more questions - personal ones - and then you'll be allowed to go. If you'll answer them, you are under no obligation."

Loonie lifted her head slightly to peer around the room - she didn't exactly see how she'd be leaving. "How am I getting out of here anyway? And to where? Back to Victoria's?"

A soft chuckle answered her first. "No. She's been reassigned, given a new cover, and so on. They are currently arranging somewhere for you to live. Somewhere we can watch."

"So you're saying I'm waiting here  **anyway** ." She pursed her lips, then glanced over to him. "Fuck it, ask your shit."

"Thank you. You mentioned before that hunters end up in Hell, can you explain?"

Loonie ran her fingers over her eyebrows. "Your 'commandments' aren't suggestions. They're commands. And hunters break, like, at least two. 'Don't murder' doesn't just apply 'when it's convenient', it means don't. No matter what. Animals and shit don't count, apparently, but anything that can properly think, like us..." She shrugs her shoulders.

He puffed several times, a small cloud of wispy smoke floating off into the semi-still air around them. "I see. Concerning, but not unexpected... How did you arrive?"

"Portal. There was a... grimoire. I didn't bring it with me, too dangerous."

"And the pistol was not?" He raised a brow.

She loosed a quiet growl. "I couldn't just... leave it. They'd find... what I'd done, they'd know immediately..."

He remained quiet for several long moments after that; one of the guards walked over from the door to whisper to him though he waved the man away. "And this... Imp, your father-"

"Adopted." She didn't like how quiet her voice had gotten.

"I see. You... feel remorse for this? What you've done? You regret it?"

Loonie let her head hang, and she lifted one hand to rub at one of her eyes. "Yes." She couldn't manage more than a whisper without sounding like she was choking up again.

He didn't answer for what felt like at least a minute, though she could hear him puffing away. "We've destroyed the pistol. Your spellbook will be returned, it's simply a succubi's tome, without their magic you could not do much of anything with it." He gestured vaguely with a hand. "They're waiting for you outside."

Great, a succubus spellbook. She hadn't known what it was when she'd left or she'd not have bothered - there were so many of those floating around on the black market and on the surface that it probably wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. The weapon, though, was surprising. "You... destroyed it?" She lifted her head enough to look at him.

"We agree with you that it's too dangerous to be left behind", he offered.

She breathed a soft 'huh', then slowly stood, groaning at just how beat to shit she felt. Everything ached, she felt vaguely dizzy, and she could feel her fur matted in several places. "Where am I going?", she muttered toward him.

Rather than answer, he simply indicated her toward the large double doors she'd entered through.

\-----

She'd been escorted out of the building by at least three of the huge guards - she had no idea where they seemed to have gotten a regular supply of brick shithouses to act as their private forces - and bundled up into a black van. She had to admit she felt nervous, they could be taking her to the woods to have her shot as far as she knew, send her back anyway... She wouldn't put it past them. But as they drove she could see lights becoming more and more frequent as they went along, indicating that they were heading back into the city.

Questions asked to the guards went unanswered, so she spent the time trying to clean herself up, at least a little. Combed claws through hair, licked at her wrists to try to clean them off, she still felt like shit but at least she was... vaguely presentable, though she couldn't do anything about the bloodstains on her clothes. She felt like she was getting a feeling of vague hostility from the guards, but none of them spoke even a word to her. Even when the van ground to a halt.

Loonie looked at the guards, but none of them moved, so once the van stopped she reached for the door handle - still no reaction - and when she pulled it open she found herself stepping out into a part of the city she actually knew. Kind of a worse part, not  **the worst** but definitely not great either. She took the chance to look around herself, then noticed a red sedan sitting on the side of the street. There weren't any other cars, and she didn't think that after everything they'd just dump her on the street and leave her be, so she wandered toward it.

As she approached a familiar face emerged as the window was rolled down - Victoria. "Should have guessed it'd be you", Loonie muttered. "They said you were reassigned."

"I was. One last favor, though." She reached into the car and pulled out a small envelope to pass toward the hound. "Listen-", she looked over toward Loonie, keeping hold of the envelope for a moment.

"What? Gonna tell me to cooperate again?" Loonie did at least lean down, though she grumbled to herself as she did.

Victoria actually laughed. "No. I just wanted to say that I was sorry." When Loonie scoffed in surprise, she shook her head. "I know, I know. If anyone else had been in charge of your interrogation, it'd have been far, far worse, trust me. They wouldn't have asked questions, they'd have just dragged it out of you with drugs and torture, and who knows what else."

"What was the fucking bat for then?"

"Baby steps." She shrugged her shoulders. "Even among us, there were people rooting for you-", she puts her hand on her chest, "And people who wanted to use a lot worse than a bat. Put on a show, make them happy..." She swayed her head from side to side. "Yeah, I didn't like it but you put on an act, make them feel like they're getting what they want, and we get what we want." She held the envelope out toward the hound.

Loonie snatched it away with another growl. "I sure as fuck didn't appreciate being used as a fucking punching bag."

"Could have been a lot worse. You did good." Victoria rolled up her window, then before Loonie could say much else she pulled away, leaving the hound to stand in the middle of the street by herself.

"Fucking... pricks." She sighed, then walked to stand over on the sidewalk. Her foot nudged into something and she glanced down to see a familiar paper bag. A quick peek inside revealed the spellbook she now knew was basically worthless. "Great." She rolled her eyes and picked it up, stuffing it up under her arm as she peeled the envelope open to see what they'd given her or done.

Inside was what looked like a lease, and a small letter that was written on a sticky note attached to it. "Best we could do on short notice. Tracking spell in place. Don't move out." Loonie frowned after she read it, then lifted it to read the lease she'd been given. Six months paid in advance. She had six months to get something like an actual life underfoot before her last lifeline ran out. There was an address on the lease and a small bronze-colored key taped to the bottom of the paper. She lifted the paper to read it, then compared it to the other buildings nearby, finding one to match in a several-story brick building on the side of the street she was currently on. 

A quick glance at her phone confirmed that it was getting late in the evening... though a glance at the date told her it'd been an entire day. "Fuuuck...", she groaned. There were two messages, though, one from Millie's phone that she didn't read yet, another from Victoria. 'Things sorted with work, still have job.' Well, that was something too. She decided the best thing she could do was head into the building, find her new 'home'. She assumed it'd be some kind of apartment.

When she headed into the building and presented her lease, the woman working the desk raised a brow - whether at her appearance or the lease or what, she wasn't entirely sure, it could have been anything - and directed her toward her room. Second floor, third on the left. She tore the key away from the letter and inserted it into the lock and the door clicked open. The building itself didn't look so bad - not great, it looked and smelled old, and in a few places she could see water stains on the walls - but she'd lived in worse before.

As the door opened, the hound found herself standing in a fairly small apartment. Kitchen off to the left in an alcove, door open to a bathroom in the back, bed right in front of her - at least it looked soft - loveseat and tiny ancient-looking TV on the right. And she had a balcony too. On the bed sat another envelope, though this one looked a little fatter than the one she'd been given. "Couldn't have just given me all this at once?", she muttered with a sigh as she sat down onto the bed. It creaked, and it wasn't as soft as the one she was used to back home, but it was better than a couch.

A quick swipe with her claw opened this new envelope and a whole slew of documents came sliding out, along with some cash. Loonie just blinked a few times as she picked up one of them, it looked like some kind of birth certificate, and there was an ID, a driver's license, there was even a diploma in here. "Lunar High, very funny." She muttered, then picked up one of the IDs to look at it. Loonie Wu- "Are you fucking- Loonie Wulfen? Really?" She sighed and let herself fall back onto the bed, one of her hands resting on her forehead. 

She'd expected bad considering they said 'short notice' but she hadn't really considered that they'd apparently spontaneously develop a sense of humor, too. At least it was something, though, and the bed felt soft enough as she lay there. Another glance at the ID suggested they thought she looked mid-20s. At least they hadn't mistaken her for a kid, or worse, old. She could deal with that.

As Loonie lay on the bed and poked through the envelope and found everything else they'd stuffed inside of it - there was a whole identity in there - she could actually feel something vaguely approaching hope. She tried to squash it down, she didn't want to get too ahead of herself, but laying here on a bed in a room that was hers actually felt kind of okay. Down in the very bottom of the envelope was some cash - not much, just a few bills - but enough that she wouldn't starve until she started getting paid at work. And now that she had an ID she could actually try to find somewhere better than a shit coffee shop.

Maybe things would  **finally** be looking up.


	9. Settling In

Loonie leaned against the wall of her apartment building, looking out over the city that she could see from her balcony. She wasn't particularly high up, just on the second floor, but from this vantage point, she could at least see out over the street and some of the smaller buildings across the way. Vehicles moved through streets, people walked, and the hound took a drag of her cigarette as she stood above them all and watched.

Back home she'd never really bothered with smoking, she'd had much more fun things to occupy her time - and nothing would ever replace the rush of being on a job, she knew that - but up here she couldn't really get ahold of some of the more 'fun' things she'd tried down in Hell. When your budget was a shoestring, smokes were about all that you could afford. Unfortunately, she'd found out that smoking wasn't allowed inside, but conveniently she had a balcony she could stand or sit on and as long as she kept things out here she seemed to avoid the ire of her landlord.

So many things to take care of now that she hadn't ever had to bother with before. Rent, bills, food, the others had taken care of everything for her while she'd been back home, now she'd been thrown out on her own to deal with it herself. At least she was reasonably okay with budgets, she'd never been able to get him to take care of it and she'd usually been forced to. She wasn't great with math, but she'd made do, and that experience had ended up being pretty valuable now that she was having to stretch too little money into too many things.

Fuck, she wanted a drink, but she felt eyes on her any time she walked to the store on the corner, and at the moment buying anything more than the cheap shit just wasn't really something she could swing. She was pretty sure the place recycled bottles and half of what was in the ones she picked up was water - or worse. Certainly tasted enough like piss that she'd believe it if someone told her.

It'd been about a month and the hunters had stopped by once or twice in that time. Never announced themselves, but she could tell. Dudes standing on the street looking up at her apartment when she was on the balcony, people in clothes too nice for this area lingering for way too long to just be sightseeing, things like that. They hadn't bothered her, but she felt them breathing down her neck and most of the time it just gave her the creeps. She was pretty sure that there was one of them down there right now, a guy in a pretty nice leather jacket leaning against one of the light poles and doing a really bad job of pretending he wasn't looking up at her every minute or so. She caught him this time and flipped him off, then crushed her cigarette under her foot and turned to head inside.

The hound settled herself down into the armchair... loveseat... thing that sat in front of her too-small TV as she flipped it on and leaned back, dangling her legs over the far side as she sat side-saddle in the seat. None of the movies up here were quite like the ones back home - for one there was a hell of a lot less sex in them, and they tended to be a lot less violent, too. Plus she'd noticed that a ton of them that she'd been familiar with back home were ripoffs of ones up here, usually with more sex, or more death, or both. Turns out demons didn't just steal from each other, they stole from the surface all the time too.

Still, there were things she liked about living up here too. For one thing, it was quieter. Sure, she was still in a city, and there was still noise pretty much 24/7, but at the same time, the quality of the noise was different. Cars, busses, the occasional plane overhead from the city's airport, animals, people talking. She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard a scream of the damned, or someone being murdered, or some bomb going off, or gunfire. She didn't wake up in the middle of the night wondering if the Exorcists had decided to come early because there was screaming outside her window.

She felt almost at peace, oddly enough. Even though she'd been torn away from her home, she didn't have any 'friends', and life kind of sucked without enough money to do the things she was used to, and she was in a world that by and large she didn't really understand the way she'd understood Hell, she found herself screaming at people less often. She didn't want a drink as badly as she once had. One of her biggest problems at the moment was she hated work and she was bored. 

Maybe a walk could help - she had a few hours before she needed to sleep to get up for work in the morning and maybe something interesting might happen, who knew. She walked to the bathroom where she'd created a 'closet' for what clothes she'd picked up - not too many, just a piece here or there when she had time - and pulled a leather jacket she liked down off the rack. It was getting later in autumn and it'd started getting colder, and even her fur didn't help all that much when she was used to good old fire and brimstone. The jacket had been cheap, something she'd found on a stall some old drunk was running on the side of the street. Probably stolen, but it fit, so who really cared.

Loonie made sure she locked her apartment behind her as she walked out, then headed off down the stairs, pulling the collar of her jacket up around her neck as she did. Once she made her way outside she put another cigarette in her mouth and lifted her thumb to her lips, a small fire springing to life at the tip. As long as she shielded it with her other hand, it looked just like she was using her lighter, and she headed off down the sidewalk.

It was honestly surprising how easily the flame'd come once she'd started looking for it again. She was a Hellhound, after all, mythology back through thousands of years spoke of their connection to the flames of Hell, and it'd come once called once she remembered to ask. She'd never needed to bother, back home, she'd rarely gone on missions and when she did, the others had always been there to protect her, so she'd never needed to bother. It was almost comforting, in a way, one little reminder of home that even the hunters couldn't take away from her, since it was more of a part of her than anything else was.

As she walked, taking a drag now and again, a thin, wispy trail of smoke following the hound down the sidewalk, she found her thoughts turning to home and the ones she'd left behind. It'd been over a month since she'd properly spoken to either of the Ms, just a text here or there, always promising 'soon' when they asked when she'd explain what'd happened. They were stuck down there - Stolas had taken the grimoire back because of course - and she was stuck up here... and frankly, she wasn't in any kind of a hurry to explain. She did sort of miss them in her own way, Moxxie's innocent enthusiasm was kind of endearing and she even kinda missed Millie the same way someone might miss their favorite lamp. The background just wasn't the same.

Loonie turned a corner to head back and found herself walking through an alleyway she'd been through a few times before. She wasn't sure if it was the same one she'd arrived in - she barely remembered that first night she was so fucked up - but it was kind of familiar to her all the same. Sounds echoed off the walls differently in an alley, and she noticed a couple of pairs of footsteps following behind her. A sidelong glance told her it was probably more of the same - shoes too nice for the people around here, one of the dudes was built like someone'd carved him out of a boulder, and the other was trying too hard to pretend that he wasn't watching the hound.

She leaned back against one of the dumpsters with a sigh and stuck her hands into her pockets - the last little clue she needed was the fact that they coincidentally both decided to stop walking when she did and stepped off to the side. "You guys couldn't be more obvious if you tried, you know", she called toward them without looking, turning her gaze up toward the sky through the thin strip visible overhead, instead.

Now that they were made they just finally decided to approach - Loonie towered over one, though the big brick still had what felt like a foot on her, and maybe a whole other person in his shoulders. The shorter one took off his sunglasses and peered at the hound. "You should cover those eyes up if you go walking around in public."

"Fuck yourself with a cactus, okay?", the hound sighed as she flicked her cigarette off the big one's jacket. "Nobody around here cares."

"We care", he started before Loonie blew her smoke in his face, forcing him to cough and wave his hands in front of his face to clear it. "We care that you're just walking around in public advertising 'whoa hey I'm a demon look at my fucking eyes if you want proof'."

"Listen. You set me 'free' to live, right? Sometimes I want to go on walks." She noticed something over the short one's shoulder, something sticking up out of one of the dumpsters, though she turned her attention back to the short one and grinned just a little bit. "I'm a dog, you know? I like walks."

He blustered for a moment and looked at the man-mountain next to him, but he might as well have been asking the wall for advice. "Just - wear sunglasses or something, won't you? Here." He unfolded his own pair and handed them to the hound, and refused to remove his hand from her face until she took them. Then he stared insistently until she put them on."

Now-covered eyes rolled behind sunglasses as she put up her hands. "There. Happy now?"

"No. We let a demon walk around in our city." He frowned and stepped away from her, then glanced back at her again. "We're watching you in case this is some kind of long con. Remember that."

Loonie just flipped him off and raised an eyebrow at him until he walked away, going back to his 'safe' following distance. She felt like she had bodyguards or something. But the thing that'd caught her eye did so again, and she pushed off of the dumpster she was leaning against to wander toward the other, then slowly pulled it free. It looked kind of like a guitar but... different. "Hey, hunter-" She ignored the hissed 'shut up!' from him and held out the guitar toward him. "What's this?"

He tried to pretend he wasn't talking to her after being called out as a 'hunter', but when she held it out toward him he looked over. "I dunno, it looks like a bass guitar. Looks broken, though."

That was easy enough to figure out, it was missing strings and there was a torn cable sticking out of the bottom of it. "You don't say." She held it up and peered at it for a moment or two - no shoulder strap, missing strings, no cable to plug into an amp - but she didn't have one anyway... And she needed a new hobby... "Sure, thanks." She let it rest on her shoulder and began to walk home, ignoring the muttered 'oh good, she's digging in the trash now' from behind her.

They wanted her to stay up here, she needed a hobby so she didn't get bored and set something on fire. As far as she was concerned, it was a win-win.


	10. Visitors

Weeks passed, and though she often still found herself missing home(even though this place almost seemed objectively better, it wasn't familiar, and she often felt alone), she was managing. She'd gotten herself hired on at some law firm further into the city - maybe all those years of being I.M.P.'s secretary were coming in handy after all. She worked longer hours and she had to ride a bus to work and had to 'dress up', which she didn't like, but the pay was a lot better and she was seriously starting to consider what she was going to do when the six months on this place were up.

It was... frightening, almost, and she didn't really see herself as someone who scared easily. It was funny that she'd faced down demons and imps and humans and everything else when she'd worked back home, but up here where she was 'safe', she was more scared at the thought that she might be finding a new place to live than she could ever remember being down there. It didn't help that the days had been growing colder and for the first time that she could remember, it had actually snowed. It hadn't stayed on the pavement for more than a few hours but she'd ventured to her balcony to watch the snow fall, bundled up in just about every scrap of clothing that she owned. Turns out snow's actually really cold!

Fortunately, with extra cash that meant she had a little extra to splurge on other things that she didn't **need,** which meant that she had a stock of alcohol around for when she wanted a drink. One of her favorite pastimes. It also meant that she'd decorated the place just a little bit, just a poster here and there, and she'd actually restored the bass she'd found. It hadn't been difficult, she'd just needed to buy a cheap amp, get a new cord(turns out that they just plugged into the bottom of the guitar), and replace some strings. There was a music place nearby that she'd been able to visit, talk to people who actually knew what they were doing, and buy a couple of booklets, a tuning thing, cleaning stuff, and the like. She was pretty sure that they'd sold her more than she'd actually needed, but it'd felt good to buy the extra stuff and not have to worry about it so much.

She knew the six months that she'd been given were going to be up soon, and she'd been saving every month like she **did** have to pay rent so she had a little bit extra... Maybe she could just stay. For now, though, she was lounging in front of the TV, just... thinking. Some show she didn't care about that came on the basic cable she had was quietly playing out while she stared at the screen, unseeing, lost in her thoughts.

It was around this time that she was interrupted by a ring on her phone - a ring she'd assigned to Moxxie and Millie's numbers so she could just ignore them whenever they called. She'd given up on finding some way to explain herself that didn't sound so shitty and had decided to just ignore them instead. Buuuuuut... maybe she didn't have to? She fished her phone out of her pocket with a frown and looked at the screen, watching their number flash as they tried to reach her. Her lips pursed as she hesitated, thinking she'd just send them straight to voicemail for what seemed like the thousandth time... But then she picked up the call instead and stuck the phone to her ear, even though she didn't exactly know why she was doing it.

"MILLIE. SHE PICKED UP", a shrill and all-too-familiar voice shouted into her ear loud enough that she winced and had to tug the phone away in shock.

"I'm right here, you little idiot, you don't have to scream, fuck", she growled back into the phone, though she soon heard a second voice - she could just imagine them crammed together around a phone sitting on a table set to speaker.

"Darlin'! You're alive!" The second of the two, of course.

"Of course I'm alive-"

"We're coming to get you! Don't hang up." That sounded distinctly like pages turning in a bo - oh fuck.

Loonie quickly sat up in her chair as her heart lept into her throat. "No! Don- definitely don't do that." They didn't even know _how_ to use the book, what the fuck? She could have sworn Stolas had taken it back, they'd even told her as much in some of the messages that she'd ignored. She stood up out of her seat even though she didn't have anywhere to go, just wanting to do **something**. "Guys, listen, you can't come here-"

"It's okay, you don't have to worry, we're on the way!" Loonie heard something that definitely sounded like a gun being cocked.

Then she felt the air around her starting to crackle, that familiar energy that she was used to, and the hound just breathed out a quiet little 'fuck' as a small pocket of Hell quite literally broke loose around her.

Two small imps lept out of the portal, Moxxie ended up sprawled across her bed, some gigantic gun that she was not remotely familiar with clutched in his little claws, and Millie sprang out like she was expecting to be attacked immediately, clutching a large metal bat. The familiar scent of sulfur filled the hound's room, which immediately made the place smell far more like home... but also sent a small little trill of panic up her spine. She **knew** she was being watched, this was bad.

"Loona! We're here!", Moxxie called as he stood up on the bed and almost immediately pulled his sunglasses down to look around the room in surprise. "Whoa, this is really nice for a prison cell." Millie climbed up onto the bed next to him, still holding her bat at the ready, but she quickly turned her attention to the hound who was still staring at the pair of them. "Well, darlin'? Get back in the portal! We're gonna get you out of here and get you back to where you belong!"

Almost immediately the hound's ears flattened against her head. They had no idea. She held out her hands toward the pair and pretty much immediately skittered around the bed to start to try to shove them back into the portal. "You two need to go! Like, right the fuck now." She found them a lot more resilient toward moving than she expected, and they stuck to her bed like glue. 

"What do you mean? We're here to rescue you! Blitzo might be gone but if he knew we didn't save his daughter from whoever killed him-" Moxxie swung his weapon around in a way that made the hellhound duck.

A mixture of fear, anger that they were here and weren't listening to her - at herself that she actually answered the call and got herself into this mess - and anxiety that she might actually lose what small amount of freedom she had bubbled up and almost immediately over. Her temper was famously short. A growl rose in her throat as she **shoved** the two of them back toward the portal. "I killed him, you idiots! Go back in the portal, I left for a reason!"

Rather suddenly, 'hard to push' became 'impossible to push' as both Imps dug in their heels and pushed firmly back against the hellhound who was only just now realizing what she'd actually said, and the 'fuck' that she was going to mutter died in her throat as both of them turned toward her and let out a "What." in unison that left Loonie surprised that Moxxie's gun hadn't been leveled toward her instead.

She stopped pushing almost as soon as she realized it, and the position she was in meant that when the pressure let up she almost immediately flopped herself down onto her bed with a soft grunt of breath as her fingers flexed. Loonie lifted her head up enough that she could look up at the two imps and let out a far-quieter-than-she-intended "I can explain."

With an expression that suggested that they were still trying to process what was said and a loud 'snap' of the portal cutting off as whatever they were doing to keep it open stopped, they both sank onto the bed. "Loona... what are you saying? He **loved** you." Millie was the first to speak, Moxxie still too shocked to do anything else than stare at the hound.

Loonie slowly sank down onto her knees on the side of the bed and stared at the floor. This is not how she was expecting tonight to go. "It was an accident." Even as she said it she knew how weak it sounded, but once she'd started - it just spilled out of her in a rush so fast that she felt like she could barely breathe. "We had that contract - you know, the big one - and he kept saying that he didn't want to do it, that we didn't want to take on that much risk. I wanted to prove to him that I could do it, that I could help, that he was being too cautious, so I went and grabbed the Exterminator pistol that we had hidden in the safe."

"We **had** one of those?", she heard Moxxie ask, but she was too far gone in her spiel to answer him.

"I was nervous, I was going to go off and do the job by myself if I had to, so I got drunk and I grabbed some pills I had laying around - I took everything, I was **fucked** , I could barely stand - but I was determined that I was going to do it." Loonie stared at her hands on her thighs - telling the two people she might consider 'friends' this, people that she'd considered 'family' how she'd shattered what they had... She wasn't even crying as she'd been with the others. She just felt _empty_ , and the words spilled from her like it was completely out of her control. "He came in, I was making too much noise to be sneaky, he found me, he told me that we weren't doing the job, that we'd find other work." Loonie could hear her own voice crack but she kept going. "I already had it in hand, he yelled at me, he tried to take it, and I- I hit him." 

The two imps sat in stunned silence as they just watched the hound they'd come to rescue explain exactly how mistaken they'd been. They'd thought that she'd been captured or driven off, that someone else had killed Blitzo and Loona'd gone into hiding - this was so much worse.

"I don't... I don't remember..." The lie cracked as she put her head in her hands. The wet heat against her palms told her that she'd finally started crying again, some mix of shame or guilt or something else, she didn't know what, forcing them up and out of her. "I hit him. He... he stared at me, shocked. He hit me back, we fought, he clawed my side, he grabbed for it and I..." For the first time since she'd started, she actually faltered, but some part of her knew that she couldn't stop now. "I didn't let go, I had my finger on the trigger, he tried to pull it out of my hand and it... it went off."

"Loona, we didn't-" She couldn't bring herself to look up to meet Moxxie's gaze, but the tone of his voice told her **_everything_ ** **.**

"It hit him in the chest." Loonie lifted one of her hands to her own, over her shirt, right in the middle. "There was... a hole..." She turned her gaze to her hands as she stared at them - she felt like she could still feel his blood on them, feel his weight in her grip as he faded away. "I didn't even get to say goodbye. He was gone so fast..." She shook her head. "I grabbed the grimoire, I... I emptied the safe, I ran... I just ... I didn't... I couldn't..."

The hound lifted her gaze up toward the two Imps, finally, and their expressions were discordant. For his part, Moxxie seemed to be taking it the best, mostly a mix of shock and sorrow that practically broke the hound's heart all over again. Millie looked like she was ready to beat the hound to death on the spot - and Loonie didn't know if she'd be able to stop her if she did. She didn't know if she'd **want** to.

"Please. I didn't... None of this was meant to happen." Loonie could feel the tears running down her cheeks as she stared at them - she knew she'd probably just lost the last two people she'd have ever considered 'friends' if someone used the loosest definition of the term possible. But she **hoped** that...

Millie grabbed Moxxie's shoulder. "Hon, I think it's time we were going. There's no family for us here to save." The imp turned to his wife, "But Millie..." The stare that she was giving him put his protest to bed immediately, and he glanced back to Loonie one more time before he just nodded his head toward his wife. The portal opened up over the hound's bed, singing the covers, and then the two of them vanished with a pop. It slammed closed almost the moment that they were gone, leaving only the smell of sulfur lingering in the air, and the hound alone in her apartment again.

Loona slowly pushed herself to her feet, tears stinging her cheeks as she lifted a hand to her eyes, wiping them away. She needed a drink. She needed a drink **bad.**

The hound stumbled her way to her drink cabinet and tugged it open, grabbing the first bottle she could see. A claw plucked the cap off as she brought the bottle to her lips and chugged it, and she drained what felt like half the bottle in the first go. That was fine, there were more. Her other hand grabbed a second bottle as she turned and settled at the small table in her kitchen, staring at the wood.

She was going to get good and drunk. Maybe it'd help her forget.


	11. Reset Deux

At some point in the evening, she found herself leaning back against the wall, facing the door to her apartment. She didn't know what bottle she was on, could have been the third, the fourth, her whole world spun in the worst of ways, making her feel queasy, but all she did was take another drink whenever she felt like something might come up. Alcohol poisoning? Pff, she was a demon, they couldn't die of an overdose. She could sit here and drink all fucking night if she wanted, and she damn well might just do it.

She slammed her head into the wall behind her with a growl. She didn't know why she'd been so stupid, thinking she should answer the phone, maybe finally tell them what happened; like they'd understand. Loona looked down at the bottle in her hand and swished it from side to side, watching the amber liquid within as it swayed to and fro, glistening in the light. The bottle raised to her lips so she could take another sip and the hound washed her mouth with yet more drink, barely tasting it before swallowing it down. She was starting to feel numb - the perfect state for this evening, she thought.

But of course, trouble came in threes, and her third bit of trouble hadn't yet arrived this evening. It wouldn't keep her waiting for long. There was a loud 'bang' on her door as a man-mountain-sized fist slammed into the wood. "Open up!" She could hear multiple voices on the other side... Of course they'd be here. They probably thought she'd called for help or she was hosting some kind of scheming meeting in her apartment. The whole place still smelled like sulfur.

Loona didn't bother answering the door, just raising the bottle to her lips to take another long swig. If they wanted to come in, they'd have to break the door down. They'd paid for the damn place anyway, it wasn't like she cared. They could lose their own security deposit if they were that worried about it.

There was more discussion from behind the door and then another loud  **bang** followed by another call, another voice. She felt like that one was familiar. "We know you've had visitors, Loonie-" that was funny, they were using the name she'd told them, and she couldn't help the bark of a laugh that pried out of her, "And we need to talk to you."

She took another long pull from her drink and then lifted the bottle. "Fuck off", she called in response, and the bottle shattered against the back of the door as she flung it, splattering liquor and glass every which way. The hound pulled her knees up against herself and rested her arms across them, then lay her forehead across her forearms. Everything spun, she felt numb, and to be honest at the moment she didn't really care what they did to her.

Loona heard a muffled order given behind the door before the whole thing caved in with a heavy 'whump', and she heard the wood crack. She didn't bother looking up, she knew what was coming next. There was a second 'whump' before the whole damn door swung in on a crooked angle - one of the hinges busted loose and that'd given it enough travel for the shank to pull out and the door to swing in, barely hanging on by one abused hinge. The predicted man-mountain stepped inside, glass crunching under boots, followed by several more pairs of feet. "It smells like a bar in here", she heard someone mutter.

"Nobody asked you," she muttered under her breath, followed by a loud belch that drew a groan from the hound - it didn't taste very good going down, and it definitely didn't taste good coming back up either. 

She didn't bother lifting her head up as a pair of shoes she thought she recognized came to a stop in front of her and crouched down with an 'I'm-too-old-for-this' creak and protest. Someone's hand rested in her hair and lifted her head up, and she just burped again into the face of the same old guy she'd remembered from before - if he was showing up here, she knew that this probably wasn't very good, but the truth was she didn't care. He let out a 'eugh' and swiped his hand in front of his face before he looked down at her. "You're drunk?" It wasn't really a question, or at the very least it was rhetorical.

"Dunno what'd give you that idea," she returned in reply, then looked off to the side to reach for another bottle - she wasn't even sure if there was anything in it. One of the kitted-up guards who'd accompanied the one she recognized stepped in the way and pushed the bottles out of reach, prompting the hound to peer up at him. "Hey, those are mine."

The man she recognized reached forward and grasped either side of her head, turning her gaze toward him, despite the protest of someone behind him. 'Reed, I don't think that's a good idea', she heard, but he just turned his head back and ordered a 'shut up' before she pulled her head away from him.

"Get your hands off me," she mumbled, then reached up to nudge his hands away from herself, slapping them idly away as she turned her head away from him again. Some part of her didn't want him to see her like this, but she didn't even really understand why.

He persisted, taking her head into his hands again. "What happened? We got a spike from your room, the whole damn place smells like sulfur-", she tried to pull her head away again, but his grip was firmer this time, and he didn't let her go, "And we arrive to find you like this?"

She struggled against his grip for a moment before she just gave up entirely, slumping against the wall. Her red eyes peered up at him blearily, trying to bring him into focus. "They tried to rescue me. Can you believe it?" she slurred, then pointed over toward her singed bed - someone was already there taking samples and readings from the scorched fabric.

This 'Reed' figure actually let go of her face at the news, rocking back into his heels as he took this in. "And you didn't  **let** them? You stayed?"

The hound turned her gaze to him again, slumped against the wall in a mess. "Oh, thought I'd run away home? Told you. Nothing... left." She gurgled unpleasantly and closed her eyes. She could really use another drink.

From the doorway came a second figure. "I told you she was nothing but trouble, Reed. I'm calling it now, we collect what we need and we send  **it** back where it belongs." She recognized that voice - one of the ones she'd heard arguing against her at her hearing or whatever the fuck it'd been.

"Where 'it' belongs is currently full of fuckheads," the hound muttered as she rolled over onto her side and then heaved - with nothing to wash the rising bile down she didn't have a choice, and her maw opened to spill what had to be at least a pint of liquor across the floor, drawing groans and even a retch from one of the myriad people in her room.

Both Reed and this new figure pulled a piece of his shirt up across his nose and a kerchief over hers, respectively, as they watched this... display. "Clearly whatever experiment this was supposed to be has failed", the woman said through the muffle of the cloth covering her nose. "This whole apartment reeks, and not even from whatever it's attempted to drown itself with. We have evidence of honest-to-goodness demonic activity."

"Did you hear what she said?" He gestured back toward the retching hound who was currently dry-heaving on the floor. "They tried to take her home. She  **stayed** . If anything that just proves that whatever's happening here is  **working** ." Reed swung his hand emphatically toward the canine who was currently not making her best impression upon the gathered figures in her room.

She could hear someone in the hallway ushering off or shooing away people who'd come to watch - probably from all the noise they were making and the gathered figures that were likely making quite a scene. For her part, the hound just wanted a shower -  **and** another drink - but she was pretty sure she wasn't going to get either thing that she wanted at the moment. Loona tried to slowly push herself to her feet, but it was a lot harder than she anticipated and she actually almost fell onto one of the guards who startled and shoved her away, leaving her to smack into the wall with a growl - in a matter of moments there were  **multiple** weapons leveled at her.

Loona just flipped them off and stumbled to her bed, then pushed away one of the technicians before she flopped herself down and put her head in her hands. "I just want you all out of my apartment. I'm not going anywhere. Fuck off back to wherever you come from already."

Though Reed held a hand out to stop her, the woman stepped forward, her hands on her hips as her indignation overrode her disgust at the smell. "Excuse you? Your apartment? If I am correct, and Reed will correct me if I am wrong, this is  **our** apartment. And if what my nose and eyes tell me is true, then not only have you broken our 'trust' in you such as it is by consorting with other demons, but you have  **trashed** it as well. Broken glass and it  **stinks** like Hell itself. This was a waste of our time and money, all because you," she jabbed Reed in the chest with a finger, "Had a soft spot for the 'oh no my dad' sob story. It's a  **demon** . Whatever you think actually happened, it lied."

The hound's drunken brain took a moment to actually process what it was she was hearing, but a soft growl rose up through her chest. Reed shouted a command that she didn't hear as Loona's hand rose up and she snapped her fingers. This woman wanted to think she was a demon? Well, Loona would let her. The snap caused several things to happen in rapid succession. The first thing was that the woman's hair burst into flames - Loona'd been able to smell her hairspray from here, and it lit up  **nicely** . The second was the shocked expression on Reed's face - it was worth it almost for that alone. Seeing the normally expressionless(at least as much as she'd known him) face light up in shock and surprise at what was happening brought her no small measure of glee. 

The third thing that happened was not quite so nice. One of the man-mountains tackled her onto the bed - quite frankly she was surprised she hadn't been riddled with bullets - and almost immediately began smothering her in punches and blows with some kind of stick. Not only had she not been expecting it, but even if she was, Loona had never been a proper fight in her life. Sure, there had been scrapes back in Hell, but Blitzo or Moxxie or Millie had always been there to drag her out of the messes of her own making. Here, with her liquor-slowed brain as her only defense, what small amount of fight she managed to put up was almost immediately buried under yet more impacts, and it was almost merciful when the lights finally went out and there was no longer anyone at home.

\-----

She honestly expected to never wake up again. Half-remembered dreams were chased from her head as the hound pushed down against the floor underneath her, and she realized she had no idea where she was. There were boxes back here with her that shuffled every time whatever she was inside of moved or shifted, and she could see her bass poking up out of one of them - one of the strings had snapped, the motherfuckers. As she turned, her head seemed to whip around at less than half the speed of the rest of her and she almost vomited on the spot. However, she managed to control herself and climb to the front of whatever this was - it was either a small truck or a very large van - where she could see the back of two heads bobbing along as the van moved. "Where the fuck-"

She was cut off as a gauntleted fist slammed into the grating, crashing down onto one of her fingers that'd stuck through the mesh. "Silence! You're being moved."

"Motherfucker!", she screamed as she scrambled back and fell onto her rear and back, almost immediately shoving her finger into her mouth to suck on it. It'd split open under the blow and she was pretty sure he'd cracked one of her claws. There weren't any other windows back here to give her any kind of indication of where she was going, and she was pretty sure that she wasn't going to get an answer out of the fuckers driving her onward. At least not until they were good and ready to give her one.

Loonie put her hand to her head and tried to think, tried to remember what the fuck had happened, but all her hungover brain could drag up was that she'd... set someone's hair on fire. "So fucking stupid", she muttered to nobody but herself as she curled up against one of the boxes in the back of the van. She knew this was only the latest time she'd let herself get far more fucked up than she ever should have been, and the second time she'd done something monumentally stupid as a result. She wasn't sure she wanted to find out what the third would be. Maybe - if they didn't drag her out to a forest and shoot her to send her back - maybe it was finally time to try to do something different.

This was far too much thinking for her poor, aching brain, however, and she closed her eyes to wait and see where she'd arrive at next. After what she'd done, she was pretty sure that wherever she ended up, it wasn't going to be anywhere near as pleasant...


	12. Punishment and Consequences

Loonie hadn't realized that she's dozed off again until she was awoken by a loud 'thud' on the back of the van she was riding within and the door swung open. Peering out of the door as she pushed herself up and off of the floor of the van revealed her to be in the city, though it didn't quite look like the one that she remembered. She frowned, looking at what details she could spot, at least until one of the man-mountain guards leaned over and peered inward at her. "Out." The command was simple and spoken with enough malice that she didn't particularly want to test whether or not they were going to follow through on the implied 'or we'll make you' part of that.

Her arms and back and - frankly, everywhere - hurt as she forced herself up, then scooted out of the back of the van to stand up. A quick look around confirmed what she'd thought, they were in a different city, and it seemed to be very, very late at night, or maybe early morning. "Where are we?", she mumbled, though she didn't think either of the guards that stood outside of the van would actually answer her.

To her further surprise, someone did - but it wasn't the guards. It was Reed. "It's best if you don't talk and don't ask questions for a bit." Her head whipped to the side to see him - he just looked tired, and he was seated on the curb at the side of the street. They looked like they were parked in front of some old motel that looked like it had seen far better days, and what had once been a larger parking lot had been mostly paved over and converted into a street but beyond the sidewalk was still a parking lot. At her confusion, he just gestured to the curb next to him.

The size difference between the two of them was borderline comical when she settled down next to him, even slouching she was almost two entire feet taller than he was. But she took his advice and kept quiet, which seemed to suit him just fine because he kept talking once she'd settled down. "You have really gone and kicked the hornet's nest. It was everything I could do to keep them from sending you back on the spot, and I had to give up almost every part of the test that made it valid to do so. You've been moved, your freedoms are restricted, they took your phone", he listed off bullet points on his fingers, "you'll be watched far more closely, even your activities have been restricted,  **and** they took the spellbook - they were pretty suspect about letting you keep that, to begin with."

Loonie made to open her mouth to protest - what was she supposed to do with all of her things taken away - but he held up a hand toward her to silence her before she could get out more than a sound or two. "It was this or go back. And once she realized you'd burned off all her hair - which admittedly was kind of funny-", she raised a brow at the fact that he actually seemed amused by that, but he kept going, "- she was planning on your trip back being particularly long and arduous. I had to call in most of my favors to make sure that didn't happen."

After letting him talk for this long, she finally couldn't keep herself quiet. "But why are you doing this?" Both guards moved forward, they seemed particularly twitchy about her even so much as  **talking,** but it seemed like what she'd done had set off something and she was incredibly unpopular at the moment.

He lifted a hand to wave them off, then lifted it to rub under his glasses along the bridge of his nose with thumb and pointer finger, squinting his eyes for a moment as he did - he looked like he hadn't slept in a while. "Because I believe that this is still our first and best opportunity to study one of your kind up close in a non-hostile..." He reconsidered his wording, "Well, somewhat-neutral environment." He lowered his hands to his thighs and then simply turned to watch her for a time before positing a question. "Why didn't you go back? You could have gone back home, been 'rescued', and yet you stayed. Why?"

Loonie took her turn to look down at the pavement between her paws with a quiet sigh. "Because... I didn't want to go back. I feel... peaceful up here. Like I never did down there. Seeing you humans and mortals going around your lives without ever having to worry about being purged once a year, without wondering when some maniac is going to throw a bomb through your window or wondering when you might get gunned down on the street just because another demon thought it'd be funny. It's just... different. I feel calm, I guess. It makes me want to..." She sighed and kicked a bit of dirt out of the street's gutter with her foot. "I know this probably sounds suspect at best coming from me, but... It makes me want to do better,  **be** better... somehow."

Reed remained silent, listening, while she spoke, but once she was finished he ran his hand through his short-cropped hair. "That is more or less why I have fought so hard for this. Aside from the chance to just... study you, we know so little about demons that isn't 'how do you kill them', some of us have never quite agreed with the blanket 'murder them all' policy that we've adopted over the years."

Loonie let out a quiet snort through her nose and glanced to the side at him. "I don't know if I'd change that policy, personally... Most of us are pretty fucking terrible people."

"Ah, maybe on a case by case basis. You'd be the first." He looked out over the street again before he continued speaking. "There will be weekly inspections, as well. Our men making sure that you don't have anything you shouldn't. And the council insisted that you cooperate with questioning - how Hell works, what weaknesses of demons are, what we should expect should one come up here. They want a tool."

"Well, as far as I can tell, you've got one", she muttered, before she turned her gaze up. No moon tonight, it seemed, only street lights to light the night. "I don't want to go back. Certainly not yet, anyway."

Reed pushed himself up from the ground with a grunt of strain and a muttered 'too old' before he turned and presented the hound with a key. "No more walks, no more work. You're to leave your room only when escorted. And if your friend shows up again, you'll be executed on the spot. They're watching you much more closely."

Loonie stood more easily than he'd seemed to and plucked the key out of his palm. "I don't think they'll be coming back any time soon, trust me." She closed her eyes and let out a quiet little sigh, then lowered her voice toward him. "Could I at least have my phone back? What am I going to do with myself?"

"I'm afraid that's out of the question at the moment, but I'll see what I can do. Cooperate and it'll be easier."

The hound loosed a sigh. "Where have I heard that before?"

He glared at her for a moment before he continued. "I can walk you to your room or these gentlemen can, it's up to you." He hooked his thumb over his shoulder toward the two guarding the van.

"I think I'll take you, thanks." Reed began to walk, and Loonie followed after him, padding across the ground. "Where are we, anyway?"

"Next state over, a small city near the border. We keep a close eye on this area, have a base nearby, you'll be easier to keep track of and control should it come to that." He led her up toward what looked like it had once been a motel, but judging by the smell and the people they passed - many who leered at Reed's suit and expensive shoes - it seemed to have been converted into some kind of flophouse or drug den.

"What the fuck is this place?", the hound muttered as she took it in. Through the outer wall, there was a large inner courtyard that looked like it was about a decade overdue for some maintenance and was slowly gathering trash and other debris. "I've seen places back home that didn't look this bad."

Reed glanced over his shoulder toward her as he led her toward the back and right, then up a staircase. "You could say it's our own personal corner of Hell on Earth. Used to be a motel until the '80s, then it was bought out and converted into low-income housing by the local government and was basically forgotten from there. We have some assets in the area who can watch you 24/7, so this is what you ended up with."

"And what are they doing?"

"I'm sure you know I can't tell you that - you're on thin ice as it is with what we're willing to share, they don't even want you to know  **names** ." He stopped in front of a crooked door, paint flecking off of the outside. "232." He motioned toward the lock. 

A glance behind told her that the mountains had followed them, and once those two had made an appearance the rest of the various denizens seemed to have vanished like so many cockroaches when someone turned on a light. "I know yours, you know", she said lowly to him as she stuck the key in the lock and - with some difficulty - turned the key and opened the door.

What greeted her was... Well, it was worse than she'd expected. To the left in the tiny space was a simple cot with a ratty blanket thrown over it and little else, a sink and toilet jammed directly opposite of each other where she'd effectively have to sit on the toilet to use the sink, and a curtain in front of what had to be the 'shower'. Her incredulous gaze turned back toward him. "This isn't an apartment, it's a  **closet** ."

He held his hand out toward the room, indicating for her to go in. "I don't mind if you do know my name, but I wouldn't advertise if you do. And this is what you get. If you hadn't set her hair on fire, maybe we could have worked something out, but..." He stood in the door and shrugged his shoulders.

She frowned as she settled onto the cot with a protesting creak from aging metal. This whole room smelled like piss and death. "There isn't enough space in here for my things." Her voice sounded too small and quiet, even to herself, but she was trying to imagine living in this... She was pretty sure she'd seen prison cells on TV that were bigger than this was. Loonie turned her gaze up toward him. "You can't leave me here, can you? This has to be a joke - for the hair thing. Right?"

Reed crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm afraid not. We've been instructed to take anything you can't find space for to the dump." He turned to the side and gestured to someone - probably one of the man-mountains - and mouthed a 'go get them' toward him before he turned back to the hound. "So I'd try to make things fit."

Loonie felt her heart fall into her stomach. She'd imagined just how bad it might be, but this was far worse than even she'd expected. She was pretty sure that even demons in Hell didn't live  **this** bad. The hound nodded her head once, then stood up as the first box was shuffled up from the van. She'd try to make everything she could fit, but she already knew that she was going to be throwing out a lot - things she'd spent money on, things she'd had plans for - but she just wouldn't have space. Just about the only 'storage' space she had was under the cot that was her bed, and there seemed to be a small fold-out table mounted to the wall.

The mountains brought up box after box, and the hound's heart sank with every new box they brought up. She was starting to realize that she was pretty sure this was intentional. They'd found the smallest place possible to cram her into with no phone, no TV, nothing to keep her entertained, nothing to keep her busy, nothing to keep her from being alone with her thoughts... They were  **trying** to make her go nuts...

At this point, with box after box piling up that she knew she'd have to throw away, all of her things and belongings... She wasn't sure it wouldn't work.


	13. Despair

For almost an hour after Reed and his guards had left, Loonie sat with her head in her hands. She didn't have anything to distract her, her phone was gone - her last connection to home - she had nothing to drink, she barely had any food. So many clothes had to be thrown away, things she'd bought to prepare for her new job, outfits that she'd thought were cute... She just didn't have space. The one thing that she'd **made sure** to keep was her guitar... It was the last thing that they'd seen fit to allow her to keep that she could actually use to keep herself busy, but she only had a few training materials she'd bought from the music store near her old apartment... Maybe she could convince them to at least let her get more of those so she'd have **something** that she could do.

Loonie hadn't even cried, she'd just let her head rest in her hands. She honestly just felt... tired. So very tired. She'd been up here, away from home, for months now, and what did she have to show for it? She had a roof over her head but in a lot of ways, she was worse off now than she was when she'd barely been up here for a few days. No freedom, no money, no work... She **had** money but it was in an account that she couldn't actually access anymore, not without leaving her home... which she could no longer do. Not without getting shot or worse, anyway. The one, small, saving grace of her new home was that she'd discovered that she had a small window on the far side of her bedroom that looked out over a tiny dirty field and a street. She'd be able to at least look outside and see the sky if she wanted, but they'd made it very clear that she shouldn't leave her front door unless they were knocking or she finally wanted to 'give up' and go home.

There were going to be some very long days ahead of her. She knew that for certain.

\-----

When time passed in this place, it crawled. She had so little to do that even playing her bass grew boring, and people would complain if she played it at night... And honestly, they'd complain if she played it during the day sometimes, leaving her nothing at all. She'd requested training materials for her bass so she could at least learn some new songs so she didn't play the same ones over and over, and the jokers who were guarding her had decided that 'training materials' could mean coloring books. She'd considered setting them on fire in protest, then remembered that these were going to be some of her only means of entertainment. She finished them in two days.

She didn't even honestly know how long she'd been here. There was snow outside more days than not, so it was "winter" but further than that she didn't know. She didn't have a calendar, sometimes she'd sit with her door open but on her bed - they'd said she couldn't leave her room but they didn't say she couldn't have the door open if she wanted to look out onto a refuse pile and let all the stench of the other residents into her room. For lack of anything else to do, she'd even scrubbed her room completely clean - she was terrified of getting fleas because she was pretty sure they wouldn't buy her anything to get rid of them. They didn't even let her get her own groceries and they often took her requests as 'suggestions' and bought her things she didn't actually want or ask for. She'd gotten laundry detergent more than once when she'd asked for juice - they didn't even let her wash her own clothes, she had to let someone come get them and bring them back clean... She now only had the left legging of all of her sets. She was absolutely certain that they'd stolen them all intentionally just to annoy her.

The hound often just sat with her door open, knees pulled up against her chest as she sat on the cot that was her bed, watching what little that she could see through the door. Passing days by just... thinking, watching the people go about their business, sordid as it was. She'd even seen someone get murdered - as a Hellhound, when they'd died she could actually see their soul... and she'd seen it slowly sink down, down, down. Most of the time, things weren't at all that interesting. Kids sometimes played on the trash pile and they were fun to watch, but mostly people just threw more trash onto it. Some guys came by once a week to cart some of the garbage away, but they took far less than was piled onto it every week, so it just kept growing and growing over time.

She assumed that at some point Christmas had come because she woke up to find a bottle of cheap, shitty whiskey sitting outside of her door... She didn't know if it was from a fellow inhabitant of this rundown shithole or maybe one of the guards had actually gotten her a gift. She'd opened it and then taken a single sip when memories came back to mind... She'd first gotten here by getting wasted out of her mind and shooting her own father... and now she was in this particular situation because she'd been drunk and set someone's hair on fire. The liquid - which already tasted like piss - seemed to turn to ash in her mouth, and she had to force herself to swallow. She put the top back on it and set the bottle back outside of her door and went back to bed... When she woke up from her 'nap', it was gone.

Loonie spent more time sleeping than doing anything else, wasting away entire days just laying on her cot, barely moving other than to eat or use the bathroom. She wasn't even sure what she thought about some days; she'd sit up in bed thinking she'd only laid down for a few minutes and realize that the entire afternoon had gone and she didn't remember falling asleep and didn't feel rested... It was starting to make her wonder if maybe she really was going crazy, losing days, if she was in some small way losing her mind... if the people who put her here were winning.

It was on one such day that she found herself being taken off to be questioned... She hadn't even realized they were knocking at first, she'd been lying in bed and heard shouting before she finally realized that someone was at **her** door and not trying to get to someone else. It made her paranoid that she was slipping or wasting away somehow and just losing touch with the world around her. They'd showed her to a van much like the one she'd been delivered here in, rather roughly thrown her into the back - they knew that if they hurt her it'd just probably be healed by the time she got there - and given her a bag to put over her head.

She didn't know how long they drove for - time seemed almost meaningless to her these days - but she knew she'd fallen over a few times when they'd taken an especially sharp turn that she wasn't ready for. By the time they pulled the bag off of her head once they arrived, she had no idea where they were, though she knew that they were outside of the city. A large manor house seemingly buried in the woods greeted them, all the trees dusted with snow... She didn't have a jacket to put on, she'd been forced to throw away that leather jacket she liked so much just to make space for a few more shirts, so she could only wrap her arms around her body to try to warm herself up a little... She was starting to realize that maybe she should have kept **a** jacket just to have something to wear... But it was far too late for that now.

They ushered her inside before she could really get her bearings and more or less frog-marched her through room after room, hallway after hallway until they finally arrived in some kind of conference chamber with a table and some chairs. There were two people waiting for her, neither with a face that she could recognize, and so, so many guards. One of them was a male wearing glasses and the other was another male - bald - and holding what basically looked like a phone. She figured it was some kind of recording device. The one with the glasses motioned for her to sit, and Loonie settled herself into her chair.

The two of them looked at each other, maybe expecting more resistance, then simply turned their attention to the hound. "We're going to ask you questions and you're going to answer them. We want as truthful as an answer as you can give. If we believe that you're lying to us, the session ends, and you go home. If we think that you are not cooperating, we will have one of these guards **send** you to your real home. Do you understand?"

Loonie nodded her head quickly, desperate for anything to break up the monotony. They hadn't called her here before - maybe if she cooperated enough they'd bring her back more often. "Okay. I'll tell you whatever you want." Even she could hear the edge of desperation in her voice and it ate at her - but at this particular moment, she'd do just about anything if maybe it meant she could get some kind of concession out of them. Better food, moved to a nicer home, a fucking **book** to read, anything at all. She felt like she was slowly dying by inches locked away in that room and there had been days where she'd seriously considered trying to 'run away' if it meant that they'd send her back and end the monotony.

The two of them looked at each other again and she even heard a laugh from one of the guards, but she did her best to ignore it. "Very well. We will start with something simple - you are a Hellhound, correct? What weaknesses and abilities do Hellhounds have?"

She told them everything, she didn't hold anything back - she was so desperate to try to prove useful that she told them anything she knew. She told them about hellhounds, imps, other demons, Hell itself, anything that they asked if it meant that she got to spend another few minutes here and not back at home... But even this reprieve was not going to last forever. She thought it seemed like a scant few hours before the two men on the other side of the table simply stopped asking questions and said 'thank you'.

Loonie leaned over the table and extended a clawed hand toward one of them - she could hear weapons being brought to bear all around her, but she didn't care - and outright begged them. "Please. Ask them if I can have my phone back. If they'll send me books. Please, anything."

The men simply walked away, and Loonie felt hands grasp her shoulders - she didn't resist, she didn't dare resist - but she called after the scientists as she was dragged away. "Please! I can't keep doing this! Please! I'm losing my mind!"

Her pleas fell on deaf ears and she was dragged back to the van, thrown in the back, and driven home to be tossed back onto her cot and the door slammed in her face. This continued for three sessions - pleading included - during what felt like the next several weeks. She never seemed to make an impression upon them, and she was never given anything 'extra'. Sometimes her guards or someone in her building - she couldn't tell who - would leave something outside of her door. Some mornings she woke up to find a coloring book, sometimes it was a comic book, sometimes it was just a newspaper. Once they'd even left her a book - it seemed like it'd been randomly picked, it was a book on the history of the Hoover Dam - but she read it anyway, front to back, more than once. She even found herself waking up early some mornings just to try to see who was leaving it, but they always seemed to turn up whenever she wasn't paying attention like they were toying with her. Sometimes she wondered if she was imagining them and she wasn't getting anything at all.

Then one day she finally spotted them - a gloved hand setting a book down in front of her door. She hurried to her door and used a piece of glass - she chipped it off of the mirror over the top of her sink, they never said she couldn't peek around corners, she just couldn't leave her room - to watch him leave. It was one of her guards, that's why she'd never realized who it was... they walked patrols sometimes, maybe she'd just assumed they had been walking past whenever she'd checked, and it was hard to see their patrols when she couldn't leave her room since her field of view was limited. But now that she'd spotted who it was - maybe it was just that one guard and that's why things only turned up sporadically - she watched them leave... and watched them walk straight to the trash pile. He fished around in it for a moment, then picked out a newspaper. He walked to the other guard and held it out in front of himself and gestured toward where the hound was, then stuffed it up and under his arm before continuing his walk.

Loonie's ears flattened against her head. Trash. They were literally leaving her trash, and she'd been desperate for it, to give her something - **anything** \- to occupy herself with. Loonie dragged the book back into her room and slowly shut the door, then peeked at the cover to see what it was... a book detailing tourist attractions in the nearby area, a city nearby with some historical buildings, a museum, there was apparently a theme park nearby.

She curled herself up against herself in her cot and tugged the book to her chest. She'd been reduced to accepting trash to give her something to do while the days passed. She thought of asking 'how had it come to this', but she knew the answer. This time, she could admit it to herself - it'd gone wrong with her. She'd been the problem. Now, as the saying went, she was reaping what she'd sown.


	14. Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Loonie had lost track of how much time had passed what felt like months ago. Snow had come and gone and the days were slowly growing warmer... Winter had been genuinely miserable, this shitty little flophouse that she called home had absolutely fuckall for insulation and she'd been cold and unhappy the entire winter. They'd brought her in for questioning several more times but she was starting to feel like they were pumping a dry well... She had nothing left to tell them.

They'd asked about everything, from imps to demons to Sinners to Hellborn, who was royalty and who wasn't, and Loonie had told them everything she'd known. Now they were either going over old questions for new information or asking her things she didn't know the answer to, questions about Lucifer, about the various Rings, things about Heaven... But she was just a Hellhound, a lowly Hellborn about on par with Imps. She just didn't know anything about what they were asking her now.

When she woke up this morning - it was at least a quiet, warm morning - she was surprised to hear knocking on her door. She probably looked a mess, her mental state had deteriorated to the point that she'd stopped taking as much care of herself as she used to, sometimes she didn't even bother changing into clean clothes... She'd tried being nice, looking prim and proper, looking her best for their meetings, but it hadn't seemed to matter and now she had just been questioning why she bothered at all.

Loonie at least made the attempt to make herself vaguely presentable, running her claws through her hair to remove the worst of the tangles, before she stood up and faced the door. When she tugged it open she was monumentally relieved to finally see a friendly face. "Reed! It's been... it's been months." The hound's voice sounded tired and dead even to herself, she couldn't imagine what it sounded like to him - they hadn't hurt her at all, but they'd been killing her by inches.

He lifted his hand to his lips and tapped a finger to his ears. It wasn't hard for her to figure out what he meant - don't talk, people were listening. Loonie frowned, but she nodded her head once in response... she had no idea why he'd come here and was asking about this, but then he reached into his pocket. From within, he produced something she genuinely didn't believe she'd ever see again... her phone and her charger.

Loonie's heart swelled in her chest to see it, and she actually hesitated, pointing at it and then herself, barely able to keep herself quiet as he'd instructed. When he finally nodded, she snatched it out of her hands and held it to her chest - she couldn't help the wheeze of breath and glee that rose out of her despite trying to stay quiet. She had no idea why he was being so quiet about it, but she was just thrilled to finally be given her phone back. Finally, at least she would have something to amuse herself with, something to look up new songs for her bass, things to read... She could entertain herself again.

She loosed a gasp of breath, she felt like she could cry, scream, squeal... But he lifted his hands to his lips again to quiet her and she quickly nodded her head in response. He pointed to the phone, then to her, emphatically, then lifted his hand to his throat and drew it across. Her eyes widened and she looked at her phone, then just to be sure, she pointed at it and then herself, then mimicked the motion, to which he nodded. If they caught her with her phone, they'd kill her. She lowered her gaze down to peer at his feet for a moment, then lifted her gaze to him again and mouthed 'why'? 

He only shook his head in response, then motioned to her phone and indicated for her to put it into her pocket. Once she did, he nodded to her and gave her a thumbs-up, then simply turned and left, leaving her with far more questions than she'd had answered in their little exchange... Most of the time they showed up unannounced... How was she supposed to use her phone like this...? She supposed she'd figure it out, but at least she  **had** it again, even if that seemed like it was going to come with costs... She wondered just what he was up to.

Loonie's answer came several days later - she'd taken to laying in bed much like she used to do but this time she had her phone plugged into her charger and hidden under her blankets... She'd at least managed to get them to bring her a warmer, thicker blanket when the colder temperatures had threatened her with frostbite or worse if she couldn't keep herself warm. They hadn't really seen fit to provide her with many amenities, and most of the guards had taken to actively laughing at her whenever they saw her and mocking her for her repeated pleas for stimulus or better conditions, so she'd stopped asking - which, she was sure, was the intended effect.

A text came in from someone named 'Bulrush', and she frowned at the screen. It read, simply: 'Hello.' Loonie replied quickly with a 'who is this?' which was answered a moment later. 'Don't ask stupid questions.' The Hellhound frowned at the screen, but she imagined she knew who it was. 'What do you want?' she shot back quickly - maybe now she'd finally figure out what the fuck was going on. 'Planning on sending you back soon. Need to find a way to get you out.'

That made her ears fall... After all of this, they were just going to send her back anyway? That was the one thing that they'd told her they wouldn't do - if she'd behave, if she'd answer questions, she'd get to stay. She didn't want to go back, obviously, or she'd have just ended it herself just to get all of this over with... 'Why? Did everything they asked.' The reply took a little longer to return than she'd expected, and contained more information than she'd been expecting.

'Change of leadership. Two 'groups', loosely. Some want study and understanding, especially of Hellborn. Not Sinners, did no wrong. Others want all killed and returned ASAP, considered too large of a threat. Not unreasonable, but you are considered loose end, know too much.' Loonie's face fell at this news. She knew giving them everything was probably not in her favor - she was no longer useful - but she'd been so desperate for even the tiniest improvement in conditions that she'd been willing to try... It seemed like her bet hadn't paid off.

'Why do you want to help? Just a demon to you.' She figured it was a reasonable question, and one he'd never  **really** answered before. It didn't take him long to reply. 'Not just demon, Hellborn. Have been reasonable and helpful more than expected. More 'human' than most want to admit. Scares them, makes them feel guilt.' Loonie decided now was probably a bad time to bring up what she'd helped facilitate while down in Hell, what she'd done while working with IMP... They knew all of it anyway, and Reed himself probably knew too. She'd rarely gone to the surface anyway, so she was 'less guilty', she supposed. 'What now then?'

Another longer message seemed to be on the way, and while she was waiting she heard footsteps outside of her door. Just in case, she shoved her phone under her pillow and pretended to be asleep, but no one opened the door and she eventually pulled it free again to check - the message had finally arrived. 'Pretend all is normal. Plans not final, safe for the moment. Coming up with plan to get you free - you won't like it but only way. Keep phone hidden. Trying to keep you isolated so you send yourself back and become someone else's problem. Why they don't want it returned. Why treatment is so bad. Intentional. Deplorable.'

Loonie couldn't help a quiet growl rising up through her throat at the thought. This had all been on purpose? They'd been treating her like this  **intentionally** ? It made sense but it still rattled her mind to think about. They'd been  **trying** to make her so miserable that she'd commit suicide and effectively send herself back to Hell... But he said they thought she knew too much. That didn't make sense to her, if they thought she knew too much, wouldn't they want to keep her up here?

That thought nagged at her endlessly, a little worm in her head that wouldn't let her thoughts free of itself. If they thought she knew too much, they wouldn't send her back - she could tell someone, tell anyone, or even go back and try to convince someone to take a portal up here and wipe them out.  **They** knew too much in turn... Something about this situation didn't sit right with her, and it was only adding to her worries.

She supposed there wasn't anything to do for it but wait and see... She had been told to pretend that nothing had changed, and that's what she'd do. Reed apparently had a plan, and that was the best news she'd heard in months... With her phone back, she at least knew how long she'd been here... Almost eight months since she'd arrived.

It'd been one hell of a year so far.


	15. The Night Is Darkest Before The Dawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is going to have to come with a little bit of a content warning. It doesn't go into much detail, and it implies more than it says, but if you have certain kinds of trauma it might be a good idea to skip this one.

The days continued to pass more or less as they had been. For the most part, she was left alone... Every now and again one of the guards would come by and leave some bit of whatever they'd found - a newspaper, a book, maybe a magazine. Given what she'd learned from Reed, she was almost paranoid of these gifts; were they meant to be rebellion from the guards who disagreed with her treatment? Were they meant as taunts? She didn't know, but at least with her phone returned to her she could actually keep herself more busy than usual.

It wasn't too hard to keep her phone hidden, she realized, after the first few days of getting used to what she needed to do. She just had to keep an ear out for anyone walking by and stuff it under a pillow or in a pocket or something, just keep it out of sight, and she charged it under her pillow in case anyone came by to 'inspect' her during the night, which she still wasn't sure about. Of course, she kept it on silent, too, making sure that there wouldn't be an unfortunate phone call or a vibration sound at the wrong time.

Very little had changed, and she now knew that it was approaching summer properly. Still early in the year but time was passing her by as she languished away. Reed had contacted her a couple more times, told her that he was still working on his 'plan', whatever it was, though he didn't want to elaborate at all about what it was over the phone. She'd kept her posts to a minimum, and a check of her phone records - which they hadn't bothered to delete or hide - showed that she'd gotten a few messages from M&M while they'd had her phone that weren't answered. Mostly checking up on her, asking her if she was still alive; she hadn't answered them because she didn't want to risk someone watching the line and realizing she had her phone. It upset her a little bit that even after what she'd done and how they'd discovered it that they still wanted to check up on her and make sure she was okay and she couldn't answer them and tell them that things were... Well, not 'alright', but she was still alive at the very least.

She'd started learning more on her bass, too. She could even play proper songs now since she often did little but practice as much as material and neighbors would allow. Sometimes they'd bang on the walls or just yell at her to knock it off and she'd usually listen to them... She was pretty much stuck right here where she was and she didn't want to make a bad situation worse by getting into a fight with the people who lived on either side of her and having to have the guards that were constantly watching the place intervene... At this point, she felt like they'd use it as an excuse to do... something, even if she didn't really know  **what.** Their motivations still didn't really make sense to her - they were trying to keep her isolated so she'd send herself back, but they apparently thought she knew too much. If she were them, she'd probably keep her in prison - and an actual prison, not this place.

Her thoughts were interrupted - she was in the middle of a song - when she realized her phone was buzzing at her. She'd set it to vibrate only if she got a phone call from Reed because she figured if he was calling her after all the secrecy it was probably something important. She reached down and picked up her phone, answering the call, only to have him practically shout at her on the other end as soon as she did. "They're coming!" She had no idea what he meant, and she stared at her phone in confusion... But they didn't make her wait long.

She heard boots and only had time to throw her phone up onto her bed and cover it with her blankets when the door burst in on itself. She held up her hands, wondering if they were here to end her, but one of the guards just grabbed her by her hair, prompting a snarl from the hound as she was roughly dragged to her feet. "Hey, what the fuck!", she shouted toward them, but she was answered only by hands grabbing at her anywhere they could reach - one even wrapped around her tail as they bodily dragged her from her room. She kicked and shouted - she was pretty sure she was being taken somewhere to be either executed or locked away, and she wasn't going to go quietly - and even managed to claw at one of them's exposed face.

Loonie was met with a barrage of nightsticks for her efforts - good, they weren't trying to kill her, or she'd probably have just been shot - but she felt like she gave as good as she got. Hellhound claws were like knives wielded by someone a Hell of a lot stronger than your average human, and they found purchase in clothing and equipment and flesh alike. Some kind of chemical sprayed over the bunch of them in the scuffle and she was pretty sure it was some kind of pepper spray, but that didn't bother her a whit. It wasn't until one of the bigger mountains landed a solid blow to her gut that winded her that she was finally brought under control, and she found her mouth zip-tied shut to control gnashing teeth and her hands bound behind her back. She felt beaten black and blue, but she knew several of them were far worse off.

A quick glance back at the damage told her everything she needed to know with men shouting and screaming from the ground, and red stained her claws and teeth. At least they hadn't managed to cart her off without casualties, but she didn't think she'd actually managed to kill anyone. Loonie still struggled, growling loudly and squirming in their grip, but she was forced to yelp as their hands gripped around the arms bound behind her back and lifted her up that way, leaving her feet to kick in the air. She scored a couple more hits, but she was thrown into the back of another van before she could do much more. She tried kicking at the walls but the van was solid steel - she was strong, but she wasn't that strong.

Loonie had no idea where she was being taken but she had a pretty strong feeling that she wasn't going to like it. And she'd confirmed her own suspicion... If they were going to kill her and send her back, they absolutely would have done it. But most of the men who'd snagged her didn't even have weapons... She'd been subdued with fists and nightsticks alone. They'd even brought her down with sheer numbers, she was pretty sure there wasn't anything broken. But the bastards had been smart enough to use metal zip ties even if they cut into her wrists and muzzle... The first thing she'd thought to try was melting them off. She tried to struggle against them and free herself, but aside from a few cuts and gashes in her wrists from her struggles, staining her fur red, she didn't accomplish much of anything at all. She snorted quietly through her nose and muttered a 'fuck' to herself, but the zip tie around her muzzle didn't let anything other than a muffled sound out.

She was pretty sure that she was brought to the same place she'd been questioned at because the drive was about as long as she was used to and she thought she recognized a few series' of turns, but she wasn't sure. It wasn't until they opened the door and dragged her out - though they led with nightsticks this time to make sure she was beaten into submission - that she peered out through bleary eyes and recognized the same place she'd been being brought again and again for questioning. She had really only seen a few rooms inside, hallways and one particular room that she'd used to interrogate her, and she had no idea how big it actually was. With her nose dripping yet again from the 'greeting' she'd gotten back in the van, she could do little more than struggle against them as she was carried inside, growling and snarling curses at them the entire time.

When the sad little group finally arrived at the main door, one of the mountains stationed there pulled out what looked like some kind of dart gun. It didn't take a genius to realize what he was about to do, and the hound struggled ferociously against her bindings and her captors, trying to at least tug one of them into the way of the shot to block it. It didn't work, but there was really only so much that she could do with hands bound and being carried by aching arms. She felt it bury itself somewhere into her shoulder, and she was  **sure** that whatever it was had to be laced with magic because almost immediately she felt herself dimming. She fought against it, she didn't want to go quietly into whatever they were going to do with her, but drugs won out over consciousness and she felt as much as she saw everything go dark as she slumped in their arms.

By the time she woke, her head once again full of molasses and her eyes swimming, she no longer had any idea whatsoever what time it was. She was in some kind of room, and it  **felt** late but all she could see was artificial light and no windows, leaving her to just... wonder what time it was. It took her some time to realize that something wasn't... right. Her head wouldn't cooperate with her, she knew that  **something** was wrong but she had no idea what and her brain felt too thick to actually cough up the answer. She tried to lift her head but found herself strapped down; her eyes spun as she looked for anything that she could to figure out just what was going on or where she was. She could hear sounds filtering up through the suffocating goop that filled her head, and she could even make out a few words scattered among the rampant thoughts and echoes of sensation that her brain couldn't process while addled by whatever they'd shot her with. 'Useful' and 'robust' were two that she could pick out. She struggled to get her head to do anything she wanted it to do, she felt like she could turn her head to the side... There was what felt like a 'wrench' from her neck like with only a great effort she managed to turn her head to the side, and it felt like something was tickling her in her side but she couldn't get her arms to move to figure out what it was.

With that little bit of extra movement - it felt like there was a band around her head holding her down - she managed to peer over at... something to one side. It glinted at her, silver and red, and she had to focus to get her eyes to see anything other than blurs... It looked like... surgical tools? And they were covered in red... Something very much like dread bubbled up inside of her as a thought percolated through the syrup that coated her mind, and she turned her gaze down. She realized that something about herself didn't look right. Her fur wasn't... in the right place. Her eyes widened as horror managed to wash over her despite her drugged state, a spike that forced some clarity up into her head.  **She was open.** Loonie tried to scream, but they'd kept the zip tie around her muzzle, and now that abject terror had brought some of her mental faculties back she could see the metal around her muzzle flaked with dried red.  **How many times had this happened? How long had she been here?** She had no idea. That more than anything terrified her.

Something about her struggling must have actually translated into movement in her limbs because a human figure wearing green scrubs walked up next to her and looked down at her eyes. When their gazes met, Loonie could see nothing but an impassive gaze looking back at her. When they pulled a syringe out of her pocket, Loonie tried to struggle, tried to kick and flail and scream 'no, please!' but her drugged mind betrayed her. The prick in her neck felt as distant as the odd tickle in her side, and mercifully that curtain dropped over her again and she forgot as she dropped off to sleep. The last thing that registered was that their scrubs had been covered in red. Her red.

When she woke again her eyes popped open with a start. Terror and pain flooded back into her head, but she was still covered in warm blankets of whatever it was they were pumping her with. She was in a room again... it felt familiar. She felt like she'd been here so many times before. Loonie tried to move her head, flex her arms, wiggle her toes but nothing felt like it was answering her pleas. All she could do was stare. The room was slightly darker this time, there was a light shining somewhere, directed somewhere. She felt cold. Loonie tried to get her head to move but she felt like even a tiny fraction of movement cost her every ounce of energy that she could muster at a time. When she finally got her eyes to focus on something she realized she was looking at herself, on a projector screen, and she immediately felt violated. She wasn't wearing anything, there were other people, they were... Her eyes went wide as she struggled against the bindings holding her. She'd murder every single last one of them. The room's heat visibly ticked up as the metal band around her muzzle began to glow red, and she felt more than one prick in extremities she was starting to think might not even exist anymore. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been able to look down at herself. The last time she'd seen her feet, her fur... With what she'd seen on the picture, as bright as her fury burned at  **what they'd done** to her, she wasn't sure she wanted to. As the drugs they kept her pumped with flooded her system for the umpteenth time, she felt them slowly, steadily forcing her fury back down into the box they were keeping her in. But instead of a tiny room, this time the box was her own head, her own body, and they were doing anything they wanted with it.

As she felt that darkness starting to cover her up and send her back down to sleep, she felt something else slither in. She didn't know what it was, but somehow it felt... familiar. And it seemed to smile.


	16. Hellfire

_ Oh, my hound _

_ My poor, poor hound. _

_ Lost, forgotten,  _ **_abandoned._ ** _ Maybe if she had stayed where she'd belonged... _

_ Oh, but it's too late for that now, isn't it?  _ **_Wake. Up._ **

Loona sat up with a growl and a start that was sudden enough that she felt like she jumped out of her bed. It took her several long moments for her to realize that she hadn't moved, and she wasn't in bed. She lay upon something cold and hard, on her side, and... everything hurt. So much about her hurt. She wasn't even dressed, and she reflexively pulled her arms and legs tighter around herself... Except she couldn't make herself move. It took her longer than she would have liked to realize that she still felt trapped in her own head like she was swimming in a sea too thick to actually move through. Her thoughts struggled to bubble up to the surface, and she wasn't even sure if she was awake, or if she was lucid, or at this point, if anything was real.

So many memories half-forgotten and buried under layers and layers of crud and drugs that she didn't know what was real and what she'd dreamed up. She felt like she'd been drifting for days, or weeks, or months, disjointed things half-remembered coming back to her through a blurry veneer of sleep. She wanted to groan but she still couldn't open her mouth. A look down at her muzzle showed a metal band that looked worse for the wear... Caked places in dried, flecking, brown-red, it seemed slightly warped like it'd been heated and loosened over and over and tightened down, again and again, to keep her from being able to open her muzzle. How long had she been here...?

_ Quite a long time, I'm afraid. _

Loona started again with a growl as a  **voice** resounded within her head. Unlike her own thoughts, it seemed to cut through the muck like a knife, unimpeded, arriving slightly before her own thoughts about it did. She had no idea who or what it was... had she finally snapped?

_ Oh, no. Somehow you are still quite sane, my dear. I have been watching while you slept and woke, slept and woke, slept, and woke. It has been most amusing watching my Father's misguided servants. So secretive, and yet so willing to look where they shouldn't for more. _

Loona wanted to cry out, to scream against whatever it was that seemed to have invaded her head, but something told her that rejecting whatever - whoever - it was would probably be a very bad idea. 

_ Oh, you're smarter than you look. You know who I am, though don't say or even think my name lest you wish to attract unwanted attention from... oh, let's say upstairs. _

A bright, unholy grin full of far too many teeth flashed through her mind, and she felt herself grow cold to her core. She knew who that voice was. Loonie had no idea how it'd happened, but she was more, for the moment, concerned with  **why** . The voice seemed able to understand her thoughts, to answer what she was thinking, and all she could wonder at the moment was why... and what it wanted.

_ You silly Hound. Those are easy questions to answer. The why is because you are one of mine, and I am very selfish with my playthings. I can respect your decision to stay on the surface, freedom is important above all, but you are, in the end,  _ **_mine_ ** _. And I will not let you stay among these self-righteous 'crusaders' any longer. What I want is a far more interesting question. I will not allow you to stay. I will end you myself, bring you back home,  _ **_and show you exactly why you would regret turning down the opportunity_ ** _ should you decline to attempt to leave. However, should you accept a minor... boon, you will be most capable of freeing yourself. _

Loona's mind had filled with... thoughts, most dark and horrifying, when the voice mentioned 'regret'. Even the vague memories of them made a shiver run involuntarily down her spine. But a boon, and a way to escape? That she'd take... though she didn't know what it would cost in return.

_ The cost, should you fail, is death. But you would be welcomed home for the attempt. It is very likely that you will not make it, but I feel a fire burning bright within you, my Hound. I do believe that you can make it. Should you succeed, all I ask is your memories. As you might suspect, I am not allowed to meddle in matters on the surface directly, even though a proxy. I can hide my tracks, but I do not trust  _ **_you_ ** _ to hide them for me. You will forget everything from the last time you fell asleep upon the gurney until you wake up on the surface, none the wiser. But what a proxy you will be, my Hound. You will remind them why Hellhounds were my war dogs. _

Loona tried to force herself up, to sit up or roll over or anything, but she couldn't make herself move, couldn't so much as wiggle a finger. She accepted the deal,  **anything** to get her out of this place and away from here, but she didn't know how she'd manage it if she couldn't move. 

_ That is rather quite simple. _

For the next few moments, Loona was glad that she couldn't scream. She felt a fire light within her, a fire so bright and so brilliant and so hot that she felt like it was going to eat her alive from the inside out. She'd felt the flame before when she'd called it to herself to light a cigarette or try to melt the zip tie around her maw, but it was never anything like this. This burned hotter than anything she could imagine, she felt like she herself was the flame, and that she would be consumed before it was through. She began to feel wet all over as feeling returned to her limbs, and the metal bands wrapped around her mouth, arms, legs, liquefied, and melted away.  **Something** thin and clear and sticky was being pushed out of her all over and burning up after contact with the air, and she felt her head clearing for what seemed to be the first time in months.

Loona forced herself up onto her hands and her arms and her muscles burned... She didn't know how she knew, but as she watched a puddle of  **it** burning away, she knew that the voice in her mind had forced the drugs out of her system as easily as it had melted the bindings holding her still.

_ My dear, that was  _ **_you._ ** _ You are my proxy now, your thoughts made living flame for the moment, you burn brighter than any Hound in recent memory, and I include my own. It will kill you before long, but you have until then to earn your freedom. You will be alone until you succeed or fail; I have business, but my power backs yours... Tick tock. _

Her mind reeled at the thoughts roiling within her head... She truly felt awake for the first time in what seemed like years, though it couldn't have been more than a few days... Maybe weeks. That she didn't know. Loona looked down at her hands and even through her fur, she felt like she could  **see** the fire burning within her... She clutched her hands into fists and let out a soft growl through a muzzle that could open and close on its own, finally. She could vaguely remember being unwrapped to have what passed for food forced down her throat, but other than that her mouth had been bound shut. All their precautions and it had been for nothing in the end.

The Hellhound closed her eyes and reached for the flame within her and found it burning brighter than the sun. She felt filthy, the flame flowed out from within her and burnt everything away, sheathing her in it, wrapping her up in its embrace like the longest, most elegant dress. The room filled with brilliant white-hot heat so bright that the floor underneath her, solid concrete, began to crack and wilt under the assault. She clothed herself in the flames that flowed freely from her like she was a conduit to Hell itself and turned her burning eyes toward the door in front of her. She had no idea where she was, what the path forward would be, but she knew that she  **wanted. Out.**

Loona thrust her hands in front of herself and a pillar of flame shot forth to slam into the door, almost instantly melting it off of its hinges and throwing it against the far wall of the hallway beyond as a solid sheet of flame slammed into it and tossed it aside like matchwood. Alarms began to blare deeper within whatever facility they'd captured her in and she could hear shouting voices hurrying toward her. Like moths to the flame.

Every step she took forward cracked the ground beneath her. Concrete caved under the sheer heat of her footstep, tile melted and bubble, wood cracked and burned away to ash in an instant. The walls around her bowed and faltered, metal sheeting melting away to slag, paneling charring, the ceiling over her head blackening with her passage. She was Hellfire itself, brought to bear upon the surface, and it was found wanting in comparison. Soldiers, guards, man-mountains, scientists, all burned to ash at her gaze. Bullets fired in her direction withered and melted away to so many molten pellets before they arrived upon her flaming visage. Holy weapons brought to bear against her shattered or failed. She was  **His** now, they knew, and they had nothing that could bring her down.

Her progress out of the facility was practically inevitable, leaving char and slag in her wake, blackened bodies smoldering where they'd fallen. Some had not even been able to reach her, the oxygen sucked out of their lungs by the roaring flame that surrounded her, or burned away to uselessness by the sheer heat of the air that they breathed. By the time she emerged up onto what felt like the 'surface', rather than underground, they seemed to have gathered themselves to some degree. Teams bearing hoses and wearing firefighting equipment bore down upon her, but the sheer heat that she brought in her wake proved too intense to be combated with such simple tools. Jets of water poured in, only to flash to steam before they even got close to her person, and gouts of flame fired back out through pointed hands and a directed finger. Spikes and walls of flame slammed into those that stood against her, lighting them like so much cordwood. Their tactics might have worked against normal fire, but she burned with Hellfire itself. Nothing short of bringing the building down upon her head would have impeded her progress, and at this point, it would have been too little too late.

The wall before her cracked and blew outward as heat sapped its strength and shattered its structure near-explosively, carving a convenient hole for her to emerge outside. Behind her, the building itself was beginning to cave in upon itself, eaten from the inside out by her flames. She was starting to sympathize as she stepped forward onto the drive through the forest... She turned back to look at the building behind her and felt something very much like a wave of relief wash over her at the sight of it. What she'd seen, what they'd done... all of it, burning away just like she'd applied a cleansing scour. She felt like she'd accomplished what she'd set forth to do.

Before her, a vehicle raced up the drive, only to skid to a stop a safe distance away. A figure emerged from it, footfalls crunching on gravel, his hands raised up above his head. She recognized him... Reed. He'd come. She withdrew the flames around her into herself, slowly forcing them back into that core within that they'd burst from like the herald of her fury. It would be safe for him to approach, now, though her eyes still burned bright enough that she cast a red glow before her where her gaze fell. "Reed." Her voice didn't sound entirely her own.

His gaze was glued not to the naked hound before him, but he carried a case in his hand that looked like an old scroll case she might have seen in the movies. "Loonie... I heard a laugh, it woke me up and I immediately thought to come here, but..." He looked from her to the building behind her, then her again. "Dear God, what have you done?"

Loonie felt her features contort as a grin too large, too wide, and sporting too many teeth forced itself onto her muzzle. " **No God here, old man.** "

As she spoke, Loonie felt the fire within her subsiding, and her legs and arms simply... gave out. Power withdrawn, purpose fulfilled, she fell like a puppet with its strings cut away. Sleep took her, and her memories faded. Mercifully, most of what she'd seen and experienced would come to her only in dreams - a little bonus for a job well done.


	17. Tunnel's End

When Loonie finally pushed herself awake, she wanted to try to find someone who'd seen the license plate of the truck that hit her. Her head pounded and her entire body ached like she'd been beaten repeatedly for a week; she was pretty sure places ached that she hadn't known existed until this very moment. When she finally got her eyes to focus she found herself in a nondescript white-walled room and her panic immediately shot back up to alarming levels, but she couldn't get her body to do anything about it. It was all she could do to sit up in bed.

A further look around the room suggested that she might actually be in the interior of someone's home... The bed she lay on was actually soft and the sheets felt like they might actually be used for someone to sleep on, and there were actually a couple of pieces of furniture. She almost felt like she was in a hotel. When she finally pushed herself up into a sitting position with her feet off the side of the bed, she placed her head into her hands and just let out a long, quiet groan. Everything hurt, and the last thing she could remember was...

It took her a long moment to realize that she couldn't remember where she'd been. She remembered the back of a van or a truck, being beaten and dragged out of her home, but everything after that was... Every time she tried to think about it, it was like the memory either slipped from her mind before she could actually remember, or she pulled up a blank entirely. Her ears flattened slowly over the top of her head as she tried to remember anything about what she'd done in the last... It felt like she should say 'a long time' or something similar, but she genuinely had no idea how much time had passed. It wasn't doing anything to make that level of panic go down, certainly. What had the hunters done to her that she couldn't remember?

Loonie started to look around the room she was in to try to figure out where she was or what to do until she noticed a small remote sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. It was a small black thing with a single rubber button on it like it was meant to turn on a light or something remotely, and there was a post-it note next to it that just had 'press me' written on it. She pursed her lips at the sight of it then just decided that if she was waking up somewhere 'nice' maybe she could at least risk the button. When she picked it up and pressed it, it actually gave a rather nice 'click' sound, so for lack of anything else to do she pushed on it a few more times. Somehow it seemed to help with her anxiety just to press a button... At least she was doing something of her own accord.

Her ears flicked back up straight again when she heard a noise outside the door to her room, and she instinctively looked down at herself like she was expecting to have to cover herself with blankets. However, she found herself actually rather comfortably dressed... A too-big shirt(which for someone of her size was an accomplishment) wrapped around her torso and what she assumed were meant to be some kind of sports shorts on to keep her decent, so she didn't really think she needed to cover up any further as the door pushed open to the room she was in.

To her surprise, it was Reed who pushed into the room carrying a tray of food - she didn't realize how hungry she'd been until she spotted it, and her stomach growled - and something else on a sling around his shoulder. "Yes, yes, I know, you have many questions. Eat first, talk later, you've had a rough couple of months", he intoned as he set the tray down next to her bed.

She'd already reached out to start shoving food into her mouth - she didn't really care what it was, she was pretty sure it was fruit and cheese and little bits of bread - so when he said 'a couple of months', and that startled her enough that she almost choked on a bit of apple. " **What** ."

He gave her a somewhat confused look, then his hand lifted to his chin - he wasn't as clean-shaven as she remembered him being, he had white-and-black-speckled stubble growing on his jaw. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Loonie had to clear her throat of bits of apple who'd gone down where they shouldn't, so she took several moments to reply with anything other than coughing. She stared at him, trying to figure out where the time had gone, but then again she'd woken up feeling like more time had passed than she could remember. "I remember being thrown into a van, or a truck or... I don't know. After that it's..."

"Blank. I think I know why." Reed slowly settled himself down onto the bed, reminding Loonie of just how small he seemed to be next to her even though he himself wasn't a small man, before he turned his attention to her again. "You were held in captivity for a little over four months." When she started to interrupt, he held up a hand. "A few days ago, I woke up with this  **feeling** that I needed to drive out to one of our facilities. I'd been trying to figure out where they took you but they kept blocking me. I drive for a few hours and turn up to find the whole place on fire, destroyed, and you standing outside. You ... didn't look to be yourself, you said one thing to me, and then you collapsed."

Unbidden, Loonie spoke what she remembered. "No God here, old man." She didn't know why she remembered those words or what'd prompted her to say them, they seemed to exist in a vacuum inside of her head other than the vague context he'd just provided.

"Yes, that. It's been three days since then and you've been unconscious the whole time. Not in a coma, not dying, just... asleep. I had a doctor I can trust come out to examine you and found nothing wrong outwardly." He stopped himself. "Well, nothing that would explain... that. You're malnourished and dehydrated so we've been feeding you-"

"Who's we?" Loonie asked while starting to shove food into her face again, she certainly  **felt** hungry, and she wasn't going to let the food he'd brought her go to waste. She wrapped an apple slice in a piece of bread and shoved the whole thing into her maw, taste be damned. She felt half-starved.

"The doctor and I, he's back in town right now so it's just us. We're staying at a friend of mine's house, you're in the guest building." He finally took whatever it was he'd been carrying off of his shoulder and put it in his lap while he sat next to her. It looked like some kind of scroll case. "The whole time you were imprisoned, I was working on this." He tapped his fingers over the plastic case in his lap. "I think it's your only chance of getting out from under them entirely."

Loonie turned her attention back to him and frowned, a piece of orange held in her claws. "You mean I'm not now? Where are we? They're still after me?"

"You burned down one of our facilities, Loonie. Of course they're after you."

"Oh, so it's 'our' now?" She put the orange back down onto the platter he'd brought her. "What's going on with you and them, anyway? Don't you work for them?"

That question actually gave Reed pause, and he passed the time by drumming his fingers on the plastic case in his lap, the quiet rat-a-tat-tat of his nails across the surface the only sound between the two of them for a drawn-out moment. "For now, yes. I'm an archivist, one of the best. Like a librarian. I was the one who cast the tracking spell on you, which is the only reason they're still looking for you and haven't found you yet... If I don't tell them where you are, they have to look for you the old-fashioned way."

"So take it off then! Let me go." Loonie threw her hands up into the air. "Free me from this."

"If I do, they'll just track you down again. You tend to leave a bit of a trail, no offense, all of your kind do. And we can follow that." He started to unscrew the end of the plastic case he held. "No, I think this is the only way. I spend weeks researching how to do this... I don't know that we've ever written one before."

"Written  **what** , Reed?" Despite herself, Loonie found herself interested in whatever this was - but when Reed pulled the top off she felt... something, and she was pretty sure she actually knew what it was. "Wait..."

He reached into the plastic tube and pulled up a rolled-up bit of parchment. It looked right - Loonie couldn't smell, but she knew it would have a distinctive smell, all old paper like that did - and she honestly couldn't believe what she was seeing. "You know what this is, don't you?"

Loonie could only nod. She did, it was true, though she'd never seen one in person. It was A Contract, and not just any - old-school signed in blood stuff. They had to be written on a certain kind of parchment, written with a certain kind of ink... As Reed unfurled the parchment it crackled in a way that seemed to fill the room more than it had any right to. Contracts like this had been being signed since the beginning, across desks and in meeting rooms the world over, from antiquity to the modern day. She'd never thought she'd actually see one. Loonie even reached out to touch it, but she drew her hand back before she made contact. "Where did you get this?"

"To access the Archives, you need magic. As an archivist..." He shrugged a shoulder. "Took some searching, but I located one in long-term storage. They'd confiscated them long, long ago. A hundred years or more... They didn't keep as detailed of records back then."

" 'Them'. You mean you found more than one?" Loonie finally drew her gaze up from the paper that was so white it looked like it couldn't exist. She knew what the script should look like even if he hadn't exposed any of it yet, he hadn't unrolled it all the way.

"This was the only one I brought out of the Archives." Reed looked down at it himself, just staring at what he had in his hands. "It's the only way."

Loonie's ears flattened as she turned back toward it. "What's on it?" She knew the theory behind them, even if she'd never had any reason or opportunity to use one before - this was Overlord stuff, they'd make deals with each other using them sometimes, but they'd fallen out of favor recently. Just too old-school, but nothing was as binding as these were. She felt like she had some idea of what he was getting at, but she wanted to hear it from him first before she speculated too much... Her head still hurt and thinking about this wasn't helping. Loonie distracted herself by shoving more of the food he'd brought her into her mouth, though she was rapidly running out.

"I wrote it up myself. You'll sign it, and you'll be free. It's ironclad, I've gone over it as many times as possible, closing loopholes, checking for cracks in the wording. I finally put the words on the parchment the day I came to find you." He turned his gaze over toward her. "I'm done after this. Once they find out, they'll come after me I'm sure. But I've put plans in place. We have until they get rid of me to sign it, after that there won't be any options left."

"What do you mean, Reed? I don't understand." He was being vague in ways she didn't like, especially where a Contract like this was involved.

"The Contract isn't with me. It's with them." He finally unfurled it in its entirety, revealing the shimmering golden lettering that gave off a faint light all of its own. It was a long Contract, and she could see her name glistening at the top, then halfway down the page was a separate section for 'them'. The Order of St. George. At least she finally knew what the people who were hunting her were called if nothing else. "As their representative, I can sign it for them in their place. I've checked the wording of that section at least a dozen times... If I'm removed or killed you'll be bound to the Order itself, not to me. It will be binding."

"What's the cost?" She knew how these worked, there was a cost on both ends. She'd have to pay something, and they would promise something - in this case probably protection or freedom - in return. There would be a cost for not keeping their end of the bargain.

Reed lifted the parchment and read from it, his voice echoing oddly around the room - it wasn't something he was doing, it was the contract itself, and since Loonie was mentioned on it she felt like every word itched at the back of her head. "The Order of St. George agrees that should the terms of this agreement be broken, the lives of the leading heads of the branches and officers of the order shall be forfeit immediately by any means necessary as deemed appropriate by the Contract." He turned toward her and lowered it back down so that he could talk to her normally. "If they hunt you, hurt you, interfere with you at all after this, it will kill all the leadership. They can't tell anyone where you are, they can't "accidentally" do anything to you, they can't look for you, they can't do anything that would lead to you being found or harmed."

Loonie felt her ears falling. This was a steep cost, she knew, so she knew to expect the worst from her end. "Okay, what do I have to pay for this? What's the cost on my end?"

Reed actually looked vaguely uncomfortable and turned his attention away from her when she asked. "You don't have anything to offer that is of value to them in exchange. The deal only works when something both sides care about is on the line. You have nothing."

She didn't like where this was starting to go and she leaned over, starting to try to read what he'd written into the contract. "Reed... What do I have to pay in exchange?"

He clenched his jaw for a moment or two before he finally turned back to her. "It will cost part of the only thing you have that is of any value to you. You will have to give up a small portion of ... yourself. Your... 'essence', 'soul', whatever it is that demons have. It will be bound into the Contract."

"What." Loonie started at him for a long, long moment, her mind racing. "What's the conditions? What happens?" That rising sense of panic that she been barely keeping under control started bubbling up again. "How much?"

"You can't tell anyone, especially other demons, about us. Where we are, our names, how many of us there are, anything. You can't tell anyone anything that would lead them to us. You can't knowingly do anything that could result in harm." He was avoiding answering the last bit, but he couldn't do it forever, and Reed just sighed. "If you break the contract, you die. And not just 'die', part of your soul is bound in it. You cease to exist. If the contract is destroyed, you die. You can not sign, or you can rescind the contract to get that part of your soul back, but they'll just start hunting you again. Or you could just go back home and forget all of this. I can send you back myself if I have to."

Loonie put her head in her hands. She hated all of this, but she knew he was right. If she wanted to stay, and she didn't want to be looking over her shoulder like she had been her entire life in Hell, waiting for a bullet or a bomb to end her, she had to stay on the surface. And it was a chance to live up here, stay up here, permanently. "Are there other organizations like yours? Would they start hunting me down too?" She didn't even attempt to force any emotion into her voice, she honestly just felt like curling up in a ball and hoping that the world would go away for a while. It was too much, too much to process, too much to think about when she was still trying to figure out what had happened to her and where she'd gone and what they'd done.

"Just us. If you commit a crime or something there will be the normal police, but if you start thinking you can go on a rampage or something just because we won't hunt you any longer, that's covered in this too." He tapped the parchment in his lap."If you try to abuse the agreement to cause harm or something, you pay the price. If you just... live like you were trying to do before the hair incident, you'll be fine. I told you, I tried to account for everything."

She reached out for the parchment and was relieved when he passed it over to her. At least she could read it, even if she just wanted to bury her head in her hands and cry for a while. Holding it was... odd. She could feel a power coming from the thing, the  **potential** that it held captive within the specially-prepared parchment that now rested on her thighs. Just reading over it, it really did seem like he'd covered everything. Made sense considering he apparently had months to work on the wording. She wasn't much on contracts, she'd certainly never tried to make A Contract like this, and so she'd never really paid much attention to the wording of how you'd do something like this... But as far as she could tell, it really was solid. And it promised something that she really did want. The chance to start anew on the surface, the chance to do what she'd come up here to do in the first place. 

Loonie knew she could just go back home, go back to her old life, whatever was left of it, return to Hell, but... she'd put up with months of confinement on the  **hope** that she wouldn't have to do that. That she wouldn't have to return to a home that no longer felt like home because Blitzo wasn't there. Moxxie and Millie already hated her for what she'd done. She couldn't imagine she'd ever see Octavia again, and she didn't even want to think about what Stolas might do once he found out or realized what part she'd played. "Just give me a fucking pen", she muttered toward him.

Reed started and stared at her. "Already?"

"Yeah. Actually, just- Go get a pen for yourself." She lifted a hand and then considered. "Reed, this doesn't say that I can't talk to demons or anything. It doesn't even say I can't go home again." She turned her attention toward him.

He was already moving to stand and had to finish the motion as he turned toward her to reply. "No, I didn't feel that was necessary. As long as you do not break any of the other agreements, you can speak to anyone you like and even go back home again. The Contract will remain binding even in Hell."

Loonie looked back down at the parchment and just sighed. "Right. Yeah, sure. If it means that I can stay up here..." She looked down at her hand as Reed walked off, probably back to the house, to go get something that he could sign with. These contracts were old-school. They had to be signed in blood. Loonie raised a finger, long claw exposed on the tip, then with a soft grunt she curled her hand into a fist, sticking her claw into her own palm. Then she dipped her opposite claw into the red that seeped up through her fur and signed her own name onto the parchment. Loonie Wulfen. She'd left Loona behind, finally. There wouldn't be any going back from this.

She had been expecting a surge of energy or a show of theatrics, a changing of the light, a rustling wind... anything. Loonie was actually kind of disappointed as she looked around herself, then back at the parchment in her lap that shimmered and shone, the words seeming to glow under their own light. "I expected more", she muttered to no one in particular. If anything she just felt slightly cold, now.

It wouldn't be long until Reed returned and she could finally, properly move on.


	18. Third Time's The Charm - End

It had all felt so disappointingly mundane. She'd expected more, but it really did seem like for all the buildup and mystery behind them a Contract was just... a contract, but stronger. Reed had returned from the house with something he could use as a pen, signed on behalf of the Order, and that was that. There hadn't been any flashing lights, any rushing winds, just a piece of parchment sitting on a table with shimmering letters and this weird sense of  **importance** that seemed to radiate from it at all times. He'd curled it back up into the container he'd been keeping it in, then made a few phone calls.

Loonie had been relieved to hear that Reed had managed to recover a few things from her little apartment that she'd been staying in. Her phone, her guitar, a few of the smaller items, and most of her clothes had been stored away in his home. The way he told it, he arrived only a couple of hours after she'd been taken, but by then they could have been taking her to any number of places and they'd refused to tell him where.

Now that she couldn't tell anyone else about the order, he'd been a lot more forthcoming about details that she'd been curious about. It turned out that they weren't just here in this country, it was global. Demons turned up any and everywhere after all... It just really made her realize how much she really  **did** need a contract like the one she'd signed in order to be able to get away from them. They were pretty much everywhere, and they'd find her eventually. It was honestly kind of genius, the way he explained it - they'd spread and spread, went by different names in different places, different organizations for every region, but they all went right back to the same group in the end. The council she'd seen hadn't even been the  **top** , just the top in this particular country. No wonder her kind had never really managed to get a foothold up here aside from the little rest areas like the one she'd first used when she'd arrived on the surface. And apparently, they even knew about those, but it was just easier to watch them than destroy them.

Reed had sent her back to the little guest house with a couple of pieces of luggage to pack up all of her things. He'd even bought her a case for her bass guitar, a 'going away present', even if she didn't really know where she was going yet. It was honestly a little strange, packing up like this. Folding her clothes, charging her phone - she sent a message to Moxxie and he'd actually answered her. He'd thought she'd been dead. Maybe she could reconnect with him after all, though to hear him tell it Millie was still pretty pissed at her. She didn't really blame her, to be honest. They'd gone independent in the meantime, taking small contracts in Hell, sorting out grudges... They seemed happy. They didn't need her.

It'd been over a year since she arrived on the surface, even if she felt like she'd been barely conscious for most of it. She still didn't really remember anything, but she'd woken up with a nightmare last night. Cold hands wrapped around her throat, holding her to a gurney... Just thinking about it made the fur on her back stand up and she forced it out of her mind. One night in the guest house was all she was getting and she'd be heading off to elsewhere, Reed had planned everything.

Some representatives from the Order were coming to pick up the Contract after Reed had informed them of its existence. They really hadn't been happy about that, and he'd already been expelled, but thanks to his forethought she was safe now. It was an odd feeling, being 'safe' on the surface, knowing that she could go anywhere she wanted, do anything she wanted(within reason), and she wouldn't have to be looking over her shoulder. She could just... live. She knew that she'd definitely be making the most of it after everything she'd been through. 

She finished packing and walked out of the little guest house wearing one of the few jackets that she'd managed to keep despite everything... She felt a little cold all the time, it was a bizarre feeling really, being a Hellhound and still managing to feel cold. The surface had always been a little chilly, but it was like she could feel it in her bones since yesterday... A tote behind her, guitar case across her back, duffel bag in her other hand, jacket, and long, comfy pants... She felt ready.

When she emerged, Reed was waiting for her, and she released the tote. "Hey, Reed... Listen. You're the closest thing to a friend that I have up here and... I missed the anniversary while... you know."

"Anniversary?" He tilted his head to the side as he peered at her.

"Yeah. When, uh." She took a deep breath. "It's been a year since... my dad died. I thought..."

His brows immediately raised in understanding when she spoke and he nodded his head. "No, I understand. What would you like to do?"

Loonie let out another sigh - she felt stupid, but... - then reached into the pocket of her jacket as she set her duffel bag down. "Your friend has that river that goes along behind the back fence? I thought, uh..." She unfolded a small red flower that she'd picked from one of the little flower boxes outside the guest house she'd been staying in. She'd written 'Blitzo' on one of the petals. "I just... don't want to be alone."

She thought he looked genuinely sad for a moment or two, but he nodded his head quickly. "Yeah. Come on, there's a gate in the back fence."

He led her to it and stepped through, then let her walk in silence behind him for a little while. Loonie thought it was kind of funny, he always kept his hands clasped behind himself when he walked. "So where am I going?"

Reed glanced back toward her for a moment, then turned his attention back forward, the bright sun glinting off of his glasses. "Wherever you want. They're bringing your papers, as a... gesture of faith, I believe they said. You'll have your credit cards, your driver's license, everything. They're even bringing your spellbook."

"Seriously? They're giving that back?" Loonie snorted softly to herself. "I thought they would have burned it." Having all that back would help, though... She'd almost gotten that nice secretary job. Maybe she could do something like that again.

"It's considered 'low priority' enough that it's being returned. It's just a book of succubus spells, they doubt you can even really use them." He walked on for a moment or two longer. "Have you given any thought to where you want to go? And not just since a moment or two ago, I mean in general. Is there anywhere on Earth you'd like to see in particular?"

Loonie pursed her lips as she considered. "Yeah, I'm not really a magical type... I doubt I could even cast any of those spells. I imagine most of them cost a soul anyway..." She thought about what he'd asked for a moment. "I think it might be fun to live in the mountains somewhere. Somewhere high up, cold. Somewhere with snow."

Reed actually laughed. "A demon wanting to live in the snow. What will they think of next." As they approached the river, he went quiet, then led Loonie out toward the bank. "Is there anything you want to say?"

She walked up to the edge of the river, letting her toes dip in the cool water that licked and lapped at the edge of her paws. She thought about what she might say, what he might want her to say, what he'd ask for... But neither of them had ever really been much for words. Loonie lifted her claws to the flower bud she held in her hand, then ran a claw slowly along the petal she'd written his name on. She knew she was crying, but at the moment, just her and Reed... she didn't think he cared, and neither did she as she carved little rivulets through the fur on her cheeks. She didn't think she'd ever really be able to let him go, not like she thought that she needed to, but she'd never even really said... 

Loonie held out her hand over the water, leaning forward just enough that when she dropped the bud, it would land far enough from the bank that the water should carry it off and away, instead of getting stuck on the side somewhere. "Goodbye, Dad." She let her hand tip and watched little bud as it drifted down to the water, then was carried away, bobbing on the currents. She stood in silence until the tiny speck of red was swallowed up by the river and she couldn't see it anymore, then lifted a hand to her cheeks and wiped slowly at the matted and wet fur.

Reed smiled, then motioned back toward the house. "Come on, they'll be here soon. We'll turn over the Contract, then I'll drive you to the bus terminal in town. You can buy a ticket to anywhere you want to go."

The Hellhound let out a soft sigh, then turned away from the river. "Yeah."

He ventured to offer a suggestion as they started to walk back. "Colorado's pretty nice. Cold a lot of the time."

Loonie looked over toward Reed, then glanced up at the fluffy white clouds that hung in the sky high overhead. "Yeah, that sounds nice." Then she stepped after him, back toward the house, and back toward a new beginning. Maybe the third time really was the charm. 


End file.
